BEIJING, March 12 -- A commentary in the Communist Party of China's flagship newspaper on Thursday called for targeted measures in poverty alleviation to ensure those most in need to get help.

"A sound poverty relief system should feature a constructive partnership among the government, the market and poor people," according to the People's Daily article by Liu Tianliang.

It acknowledged that lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty has been the most important achievement of reform and opening up, but said short-term and conventional measures would no longer work for those remaining below the national poverty line.

The government cannot win the war against poverty on its own, and China must come up with ways to encourage people to "lift themselves out of poverty," it said.

With little time left to reach China's goal of eradicating poverty by 2020, it urged authorities to accelerate poverty relief work with more action than words.

The article praised the authorities for starting to set up a database of poverty-stricken people in an effort to get a more detailed picture of the group. The project is important in verifying the authenticity of claims for relief funds, it said.