Q: How will Guangxi eliminate poverty by 2020, as required by the central government?

Peng: By the end of 2014, 5.38 million rural residents in Guangxi lived on less than $1.25 a day. The government organized 250,000 grassroots civil servants to visit each of these families to understand their practical difficulties and conditions.

Heads of governments at various levels take the main responsibilities for poverty alleviation, and their performance will be judged on their accomplishments. The government will help to develop home workshops and e-commerce, create jobs for the poor, relocate people living in inhospitable places, provide a special ecological compensation fund for poor people living in places with a fragile ecology to dissuade them from developing polluting industries, improve education and medical care for the needy and promote border trade. The government should cover the poor with a basic welfare net, and provide free vocational training and loan-interest subsidies to arm poor farmers with skills and funding.

Li Yang in Beijing contributed to this story.