China is a developing country. There are still quite a number of people living in poverty. Since 1986, the Chinese government has been organizing poverty alleviation program on a large scale throughout China in a planned way. The government endeavors have won the praises and appreciation of all the circles in the society. With the efforts made by the whole society, the poverty population had dropped to 65 million from the original 125 million by 1995.

For years, ACWF has deemed helping poor women out of poverty as its main task. In the early 1980s, women's federations (WF) at all levels started to contact the poor house- holds in the poor areas. Since 1988, supported by the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council, ACWF has trained more than 1,300WF cadres of the poor regions. The trainees played a leading role in changing poor women's status in their hometowns afterwards. Other than learning in classrooms, the trainees were offered visits to the better-off coastal areas or posted in fields to gain hands-on experiences. To bring sound and meaningful changes to women masses, ACWF also launched countrywide "Two Learns and Two Competes" Campaign (i.e. to acquire literacy and technical know-how, to emulate each other in accomplishments and contributions) among the rural women. In the Campaign, ACWF ran various training classes to raise women's competence and qualification; helped women get more income by developing courtyard economy and implementing development projects; and tried in all ways to make 1.6 million women shake off poverty, such as setting up women-headed households for technical demonstration, or designating places or households for follow-up contacts and forming hand-in-hand advancement of achieving better-off livelihood for all through strengthening mutual aid between the better developed and the underdeveloped.

In the past few years, ACWF absorbed international donations totaling 6.65 million US dollars for projects targeting 230,000 women as direct beneficiaries in the poor areas of about 20 provinces and autonomous regions in China.

After the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, in order to promote the implementation of the Platform for Action and the Program for the Development of Chinese Women, ACWF declared in 1996 in its Third Session of the Executive Committee of the Seventh Women Congress that great efforts will be made by WF at all levels to carry out the program prescribed in the Action of Facilitating Women in Poverty Alleviation in the following five years. Advocated by ACWF, the State Council decided to adopt a pro-women policy in selecting aid-poor project applications under the same condition, which applies to all provinces. WFs at all levels are required to lay emphasis on the following tasks:

----to designate places or households for contact in poverty alleviation campaign continuously;

----to implement women-oriented poverty alleviation projects by using capable women or successful households as key elements to lead others for multiplier purposes;

----to train the WF cadres of 592 poverty counties newly designated by the State Council; and

----to carry out successively the hand-in-hand advancement of achieving better-off livelihood for all through strengthening mutual aid between the better-developed and under-developed so as to help another I million women out of poor status by the end of this century.