China provides a good example of the continued need for targeting agricultural and rural investments to less-favoured areas in order to address widespread food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty. In spite of the impressive overall performance of its economy, which achieved an annual increase of agricultural output at 5.3% per annum between 1980 and 1993, China experienced (i) increasing social differentiation and income gaps in urban-rural income levels and within rural areas; (ii) input supply shortages, particularly in poorer regions; (iii) increased outmigration from rural areas, but limited urban employment and services; and (iv) a greater-than-anticipated increase in population. Reduction of rural poverty in China has stagnated in recent years, and the incidence of absolute poverty is estimated by IFAD at around 14% of the total rural population. Absolute poverty has been largely eliminated from the better-endowed rural areas, but is increasingly concentrated in resource-poor regions.

IFAD projects aim to address the fundamental problems of limited productive resources and employment in three of the poorest regions: Ganzhou Prefecture (Jiangxi), Qinghai/Hainan (Tibet) and North East Sichuan. In Ganzhou. a hilly and mountainous area, the average household has access to only 0.25 ha of land. In these regions outmigration increasingly is being seen as the main strategy for survival for the poorest households. Women tend to be particularly affected by this process, as they often are socially and economically disadvantaged and represent almost two thirds of the illiterate. As men migrate in search of work, women must increasingly assume responsibility for on-farm labour.

Project activities are designed to improve food security by expanding the basic infrastructure for crop production, such as irrigation and drainage, improving beneficiary access to livestock and tree crops to assist in income diversification, and financing small-scale, off-farm, income-generating enterprises to increase, in particular, the economic independence of women. Social conditions are being improved with the building of rural roads and drinking water facilities and the ameliorating of social services, specifically those for women and children. Beneficiaries are actively involved in project design and evaluation to empower their general capacities and enhance their self-respect and confidence. Their general skills are being improved to facilitate their access to a broader range of employment opportunities.

Employment opportunities of beneficiaries are directly expanded through collaboration with WFP, which would be responsible for targeted, labour-intensive food-for-work programmes (in North East Sichuan). In the past, these programmes have considerably improved living conditions and food security in other parts of China and have achieved impressive productive infrastructure assets.