ABSTRACT

For nearly thirty years, the Chinese government has been consistently engaged in helping the poor in its ethnic areas, which is the important guarantee to eliminate poverty and to reduce disparities in regional development in our country, as well as the necessary requirement to promote the development in ethnic areas and to consolidate our country's ethnic relationships. It is also the indispensable approach to building our country into a wealthy society and to realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Since 1986 when our government began organizing poverty aid programs, the poverty aid policies in ethnic areas have holden the spotlight and have become an important research subject of our country's ethnic theories and policies. At present, our country's poverty aid has come to a new stage of whole-regional aid and development for areas with special difficulties. In this new stage, the ethnic areas have become the most difficulty part in the fight against poverty thanks to their large poverty population and their severe poverty degree. Therefore, the importance of the subject to help and develop the ethnic poverty-stricken areas is drawing more and more attention.

The West Yunnan Ethnic Poverty-Stricken Border Area lies in the west of Yunnan Province. It is a whole-regional-special-difficulty area with the combination of a border area, an ethnic area and a poverty-stricken area, as well as a focus of our country's new stage poverty aid and development. However, there is up to now no research on this area in our domestic academia. To make up, this dissertation tries to analyze all-roundedly and accurately the problems and dilemmas the current poverty aid and development face in this area, and it tries to provide measures and suggestions to better and futher the local poverty aid. To put this research against the background of the poverty aid and development in our country's ethnic areas, this dissertation first probes the theoretical basis and the reality basis for the poverty aid and development in our country's ethnic areas, and then it presents the favorable policies and measures for our country's poverty aid and development in ethnic areas, as well as their strategic significance for building China into a wealthy society, for realizing simultaneous prosperity, and for reinforcing ethnic solidarity. Subsequently, this thesis discusses the natural conditions, the local poverty characteristics, the current ethnic relationships status, and the history, achievements and experience of the poverty aid and development in the West Yunnan Ethnic Poverty-Stricken Border Area. Based on this and combined with on-site field work, the dissertation thoroughly analyzes and probes the problems and dilemmas existent in the current poverty aid and development in this area, and quests for their root causes. The facts are especially pointed out that education in this region is underdeveloped, that the poor has little ability to develop themselves, and that the traditional ethnic cultures are pooly protected and inherited. In addition, other serious problems exist in the poverty aid and development in this area, such as the bureaucratism as the result of the defects in the local poverty aid mechanism, the low efficiency in the management of poverty aid funds and projects, and the loss of legal rights and active participation of the local poor in the distribution of poverty aids and resources. All of these are severly hampering and undermining the local poverty aid and development.

To find solutions to these problems and dilemmas, this dissertation connects poverty aid with the needs of the local ethnic poor and the West Yunnan Ethnic Poverty-Stricken Border Area as a whole. It focuses on the ability improvement of the local ethnic poor, the institutional guarantee of their rights to take part in poverty aid affairs, and the bettering of the poverty aid mechanism. It deeply analyzes the close connection between the protection plus development of local ethnic cultures and the poverty aid cause. This dissertation stresses the full arousal of the subjectivity and initiation of the ethnic poor in poverty aid and development; it proves that the precondition and guarantee of the long and lasting out-of-poverty-into-prosperity can be nothing else but the deep participation of the poor in the poverty aid and development. Based on the above all, the thesis gives foreseeing and strategic general principls and specific suggestions for the local poverty aid and development in the new stage, with which the thesis expects to presents some references for the new stage poverty aid and development in this area, and furthermore, to contribute the author's share to our country's academic research on the poverty aid and development in ethnic areas with special difficulties.