Beijing - The number of Chinese people living below the poverty line has been cut to 42 million last year from 250 million in 1978, the official Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. In 1978, China was home to one quarter of the world's poor.
Now it holds only one tenth, Xinhua said. It said China invested 110 billion yuan (€13 billion) between 1986 and 1998 in industrial projects to raise the incomes of the poor.