China province with largest remaining poor population eliminates absolute poverty (8)

Luo Zhihua, an official assigned to aid the poverty-reduction drive, cuts hair for a villager in a hamlet of Bulangshan Township in Menghai County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, April 12, 2020. Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which had the country's largest remaining poor population at the end of last year, has eradicated absolute poverty, officials said on Saturday. The last nine counties in the province were delisted from the poverty-stricken county list, which meant all its 88 poverty-stricken counties have shaken off poverty, said Huang Yunbo, director of the provincial poverty alleviation office. It also marks that the 11 ethnic minority groups with relatively smaller populations in the province have bid farewell to poverty. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)