Serving a two-year jail term for gun-running, Xu Junyou longs for freedom and an honest job in Guangdong Province, south China's economic powerhouse.

Xu had been a farmer in Songtao Miao Autonomous County, of the southwestern Guizhou Province, before his conviction.

"I know it's a crime to sell guns," Xu says, "but the rewards were too tempting -- it was as much as my family can earn in three months."

Two hundred yuan (25 U.S. dollars) was his reward for selling a pistol. For Xu, who had just five years at school and scraped a living from less than a tenth of a hectare of farm land, that was a fortune.

A million Chinese still exist below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day, although 195 million emerged from poverty from 1990 to 2002, accounting for more than 90 percent of global poverty reduction, according to the World Bank.

One of China's poorest regions, Songtao has nearly a third of its population mired in poverty and less than 5 percent of its labor force have been to senior middle school.

More than 30 percent of the county's villages have no roads and more than 40 percent no school.

But with a long history of hunting and rifle-making, Songtao began to attract gun purchasers as access to the outside world improved.

As a result, some impoverished residents have turned to gun making and trading to make a living.

However, the traditional hunting rifles have been replaced with hand-made low quality pistols, which are sold in booming coastal cities for around 10,000 yuan apiece. Police frequently find such guns used in crimes, especially in Guangdong and southeast China's Fujian Province.

The trade has alarmed the authorities, and police launched a crackdown on gun crime in Songtao, where more than 600 people have been convicted for making and selling guns since 1993.

"I sold guns to pay the school fees of my 13-year-old child," says Xu.

Unable to afford the fees, Xu's older child, now 15, quit school and left with Xu's wife to work in the city.

"I have heard since that the government is to abolish rural school fees," Xu said.

As part of its anti-poverty strategy, the government scrapped tuition and miscellaneous fees for primary and middle school students in rural Western regions from this spring.

The policy has benefited more than 50 million students, saving families about 140 yuan per year for each child.

"There are many cases in which people illegally made or sold guns because they were too poor to afford schooling, living or medical expenses. Even some police sympathized with the criminals, " says Long Wenyu, leader anti-gun team of the public security bureau of Songtao.

"Simply cracking down on gun crimes can't solve the cause of the problem. It must be combined with poverty alleviation," says Long. "We have learnt that from more than a decade of experience."

Since 2003, the government has dispatched production reduction teams to six towns and 11 villages where gun crime is rampant.

An average 200,000 yuan has been spent on water projects and roads, spreading farming technologies and improving hygiene.

"The anti-poverty efforts have reduced the crime rates substantially in those areas," says Long Haicheng, director of the public security bureau of the Songtao County.

"To consolidate the achievements, the government needs to provide continuous assistance, such as medical care for farmers and education and expanding the rural minimum living allowance system," says Long Haicheng.

This year, the county government began investing an annual 500,000 yuan each year in 11 villages which once had serious problems of gun crimes and help them shake off poverty within five years, said Luo Xiuhong, deputy Party head of Songtao.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of China's anti-poverty strategy.

"China's development experience and contribution to global poverty reduction have been unprecedented," said James Adams, vice president for east Asia and Pacific region of the World Bank. "The Bank is keen to learn how this experience can be shared with other countries."

About 70 percent of poor Chinese were pushed into poverty by income shocks, such as layoffs, injuries, ill health or crop failures, the latest World Bank findings show.

The government has launched a plan to eliminate poverty by providing each village with 200,000 yuan and policy support in credit and industrial development. Thirty seven villages in Songtao are covered by the plan.

Source: Xinhua