Most of Tian Shuang’s relatives are herding goats in the barren hills of Ningxia province, one of the poorest parts of western China. But last year Mr Tian came down to Minning, a small town in the valley, when the local government, as part of an anti-poverty programme, gave him a job growing mushrooms and ornamental plants in a commercial nursery garden.His name, address and income (20,000 yuan a year, or $2,900—six times the minimum wage) are written on a board by its greenhouse door.
by: prep.(表示位置)在…近旁; 在身边 near
(表示时间)不迟于; 在…时候 not later than
(表示移动方向)从…中经过 passing through or along
(表示方式)搭乘,通过; 抓住…; 靠,采取; 就…而论; 以…称呼方式; 以…的名义; 凭着 through the use or means of
(表示原因)随…而来 as the result of
(表示方位)偏于 inclined to one side
(表示环境)借着…光亮 depend upon the light of
(表示关涉)经过 passing through
(表示程度)以…之差 with disparity of
(表示关系)对待 treat
(表示依据)根据 in accordance with
(表示比率)以…幅度; 以…为单位; …比 …to the amount or degree of
(表示累加)(一个)接着 one by one
(表示动作者)被〔由〕; 由…创作〔演奏〕 show the name of the person who wrote a book, directed a film, made a work of art, etc.
adv. 在近旁 near
经过,走过 past
保留 in reserve
绝大多数田双的亲戚是在宁夏的贫瘠的荒山上放牧，这是中国西部最贫穷的地区之一。 但去年，田先生来到了山谷的一个小镇——闵宁镇。作为一个反贫困计划的一部分，当地政府在里给了他一份种植蘑菇和在商业苗木园观赏性植物的工作。他的名字， 地址和收入（每年20,000元，或者2,900美元——最低工资的6倍）都写在温室大门旁边的展板上。
闵宁镇
Mr Tian’s name is also pinned up on the walls of the town hall, along with those of 409 other people in the area who, without help, would be living below the local poverty line of 3,200 yuan a year (this is about 40% above the national minimum, but still not enough to buy meat more than once a week, or to spend on new clothes). The town lists the problems and requirements of each of its poor people.Thirty-seven are poor because of health problems;77—including some of MrTian’s relatives—live in isolated,inhospitable areas; 95 are physically handicapped,and so on.Also listed is the help given by the government to each person,such as the provision of work,a solar generator or a cow.
pin up 钉住,用针别住
inhospitable adj.不好客的；不适于居住的
handicap n.障碍
vt.妨碍
田双的名字也被刻在了市政厅的墙上，和他一起上榜的还有在这个地区的其他409人.这些人如果没有得到政府的帮助，将生活在当地的每年3200元的贫困线之下。该地的贫困线虽然高于国家线的40%，但仍不足以每周购买两次肉或者买件新衣服。该镇所有贫困人民的困难及需求都被记录下来了：37位人民是因为健康问题；77位居住在偏远，不适合居住的地方，其中还有田双的亲戚；95位因身体残疾，等等。政府给予每位人民的帮助也被记录下来了，例如一份分配的工作、一台太阳能发电机或者一只母牛。
Minning is a model town.Its poverty alleviation scheme was set up by Xi Jinping,China’s president, between 1999 and 2002 when he was governor of Fujian,a wealthy province in the south. (Fujian is twinned with Ningxia as part of a national attempt to spread expertise and money from rich to poor areas.) The system that Minning pioneered is now spreading throughout China. It focuses on poor individuals, and on drawing up specific plans for each, rather than merely helping poor places to develop in the hope that wealth will trickle down to the poorest. Other countries are trying this, too, but China is one of the few developing nations with a bureaucracy big enough and bossy enough to do it well.
be twinned with 结成姊妹城市
bossy adj.专横的；爱发号施令的
n.母牛或者小牛
闵宁镇是一个模范城镇。它的消除贫困的计划是由习近平发起的，当时（1998年-2002年）习近平还是福建省的省长。福建和宁夏是姊妹城市，是国家将知识与金钱由富有地区转移到贫困地区的尝试。由闵宁镇率先倡导的这一消除贫困的计划在全国范围内得到推广。它关注每一个贫困个体，并且位每个人建立确切的计划，而不是让贫困地区的人民认为财富会慢慢的流入贫困地区。其他国家也在尝试这样做，但中国是为数不多的发展中国家中能将它做好，尤其在腐败与专横严重的条件下。
China has been a hero of the world’s poverty-reduction efforts. It has eradicated poverty in cities (by its definition, at least) and reduced the number of rural people below the official poverty line of 2,300 yuan a year at 2010 prices from 775 m in 1980 to 43m in 2016. Its aim now is to have no one under the line by2020.
中国是全世界为摆脱贫困而努力的典范。中国已在城市中消除贫困，农村人口（低于2010年国家年2300元的贫困线）由7.75亿降到到430万。中国的目标是到2020年之前消除绝对贫困。
Two years ago Mr Xi set this as one of the main jobs of his presidency.He calls it “the baseline task for building a moderately prosperous society”(which the Communist Party wants to create by its 100th birthday in 2021). Politically, poverty reduction matters because,as one party member says, unless China solves the problem of income inequality,the party’s legitimacy will bequestioned. The party owes its power to a revolt fuelled by the miseries of the countryside. It does not want to be accused of failing to fulfil its mandate to eliminate them.
legitimacy n.合法；合理；正当
mandate n.命令；指令；要求；授权
v.把(某一地区)置于委任管理下
两年前，习总书记将消除贫困作为他执政期间的主要任务，他将其称为“建设小康社会的基本任务”。在政治上，降低贫困至关重要。正如某个党派成员说到：如果中国没有消除收入不平等的现象，共产党的合法性就会受到质疑。共产党拥有权力去抵制一系列农村叛乱。共产党也不希望被指责未能履行其消除它们的使命。
But the last stage of poverty reduction will be the most difficult. China’s success so far has been based largely on economic growth, which has generated jobs for the able-bodied. The final stage will be costly and complicated because many of the remaining poor are people who, because of physical or mental disabilities, cannot hold down jobs. A recent government survey found that 46% of China’s poor were poor because of their health.
able-bodied adj.体格健全的；强壮的
消除贫困的最后阶段将会是最艰巨的阶段。中国目前所取得的成就主要基于经济增长，经济的增长给那些体格健全的人提供了就业机会。消除贫困的最后阶段需要花费的成本更高，情况也更复杂，因为现在仍处于贫困状况的人，很多是身体或精神有缺陷的，他们无法从事工作。有调查显示46%的中国贫困人口是因身体原因而贫困。
Targeting individuals will help. By2014 the government had compiled a “poverty household registry”of every person and household below the poverty line.The following year it said a personalised poverty alleviation plan must be drawn up for everyone included. The Philippines and Mexico also have such registries—they can help with monitoring the status of the poor,identifying their needs and(in theory) preventing waste and corruption.
“精准扶贫”的计划将发挥作用。2014年，政府建立了“贫困家庭登记册"，登记的每个人、每个家庭都是在贫困线之下，个性化的消除贫困的计划将在接下来的一年起草。菲律宾和新加坡也有类似的登记册，这种方法可以更好的管理贫困人口，确定他们的需求和防止浪费和腐败。
There are signs that China’s is indeed improving its main form of poor relief, which is called “subsistence guarantee”,or dibao.The dibao programme has been notoriously inefficient. Many households that qualify for payments do not receive them because of corruption and bureaucratic failings. A survey by the World Bank found that between 2007 and 2009 just 10% of those that did get the dibao had household incomes below the poverty line (ie, 90% did not qualify for the hand outs they were getting). The system is also corrupt. In 2015 an official in Henan province was found to have 267 bank deposit books in the names of extremely poor people, from which he had misappropriated 500,000 yuan of welfare payments.
notoriously adv.臭名昭著地；众所周知地
misappropriated vt.滥用；误用
有迹象表明，中国正在改善它消除贫困的主要方式，即”生活保障“或低保。众所周知，低保曾是一种低效率的方式。许多家庭达到了低保的条件，却因腐败和官僚制度而得不到那笔钱。世界银行的一项调查发现,在2007年和2009年之间只有10%的那些得到了低保的家庭收入低于贫困线(即90%不符合条件的确得到了低保)。这个系统也很腐败。2015年，河南省的一名官员被发现有267本存折，冒名挪用500000元。www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/201411/15/t20141115_3907324.shtml
But this may be changing. Poor people are getting more job training, as in Min ning. There has been a crackdown on corruption. Ben Westmore of the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, recently trawled through household data from five provinces collected by researchers at Peking University. He found that in 2014 about a third of rural households receiving dibao payments were below the poverty line—not good, but better than 10%. In Guang dong province in the south, an early starter in its focus on individual needs, more than half of recipients were below the line.
crackdown n.镇压；制裁；痛击
trawled n.拖网；排钩
v.用拖网捕鱼；搜罗；查阅（资料）
但是这一切将发生变化。像在闵宁镇，贫困人民得到越来越多的培训，这将会是对腐败的一次严厉镇压。来自经济合作与发展组织的Ben Westmore，最近在查阅五个省份的家庭资料，这些资料是由清华大学收集的。他发现，2014年，有三分之一低于贫困线的农村家庭获得了低保，这个数据不太好，但总比10%好。在广东省，一位很早的发起者注重个人的需求，却有超过一般的贫困人口得到了低保。
Still, there is a long way to go: most poor households still do not get dibao money. In the sample studied by Mr Westmore, three quarters of them did not. It hardly helps that the poverty registry and dibao data are kept by different government departments; the two are not linked. The dibao programme, though financed largely by the national government, is administered locally. This means local areas may set their own poverty lines and benefits. Some thresholds are far below the national minimum, and payments are barely enough to live on. Total dibao spending peaked in 2013 and has been falling since then—partly because governments are getting stingier. China spends a mere 0.2% of GDP on the dibao system, far below comparable programmes elsewhere. Indonesia’s poverty relief costs 0.5% of GDP.
stingyadj.吝啬的；小气的
中国还有很长的一段路要走，因为绝大多数的贫困人口都没有得到低保。从Ben Westmore的调查中可以发现，有四分之三的贫困人口还没有得到低保。贫困的建档和低保数据的保存是两个毫无关系的政府部门的工作。虽然低保是由国家拨款，但各地区自行确定低保标准。这就意味着地方政府会自行设立贫困线和福利。一些家庭的生活状况远低于全国最低标准，他们得到的补贴并不能满足基本生活所需。总体来看，低保的费用在2013年达到最高，此后开始下滑，最主要的原因还是政府变得更加吝啬。中国低保支出仅占国内生产总值（GDP）的0.2%，其比重远低于国家的同类支出。而印度尼西亚的消除贫困支出都占国内生产总值（GDP）的0.5%。
Worse, some poor people are not even included in the registry. In a village of 100 poor households in Shanxi province, only ten families are in it—friends of the party boss. If the registry is flawed, poverty relief is all the more likely to be flawed too.
更糟糕的是，有些贫困人口并没有建档。在山西省一个有100户贫困家庭的村子里，建档的只有10户家庭（当地干部的亲友）。如果登记制度存在瑕疵，那么脱贫计划当然也存在瑕疵。
All these efforts are aimed only at extreme poverty in the countryside. The government claims the urban kind does not exist, ie, that no one in cities has less than 2,300 yuan a year. But that minimum is too low for cities, where living costs are higher. Using more realistic thresholds, Mr West more found that urban poverty was actually higher than rural poverty in four of the five provinces covered by the data he used.
所有的努力针对的仅是农村的极端贫困人口。政府声称城市里已经不存在极端贫困人口，也就是说城市里没有人的年收入低于2300元。但现行贫困线标准对于城市来说太低了，因为城市的生活成本更高。从更加客观的数据来看，Ben Westmore发现在这五个省份中，有四个省份的城市的贫困远高于农村。
At current rates of reduction (more than 10m fewer people annually in extreme poverty), Mr Xi should be able meet his target by 2020. It will be hailed as a great achievement. But huge government effort will still be needed to help the worse-off. It will not be the end of poverty in China.
如果以目前的速度推进，即每年有超过1000万人摆脱极端贫困，习近平总书记应该能在2020年实现他的目标。这将是一个伟大的成就。但这并不意味着中国将完全消除贫困。政府仍需要尽最大的努力去帮助那些穷人。
感悟
最近爸爸身体状况不乐观，不能外出劳作挣钱，而妈妈要照顾爸爸，家里便没有了收入来源。妈妈找过村书记说申请低保的事情，村书记并没有说具体情况，却只说“别以为低保很容易拿的”。村里有情况比我家好的家庭却拿着低保，腐败真是随处可见。
也许有这笔钱生活会更好，但没这笔钱，我也会努力不让父母因为了拿低保而看别人的脸色。现代社会，有感动，却也有冷嘲热讽，关键在于自己！
作为一名英语爱好者，这仅作个人英语学习用。
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