Many questions must be answered after a luxurious government office building was opened in a “poverty-stricken” prefecture of Hailun, Heilongjiang province, says an article in the Beijing News Daily (excerpts below).

“Poverty-stricken county” describes counties that are verified as so poor that the central government must provide them with direct financial assistance. However, this is not an embarrassing title for some county heads, but a lucrative, if not honorable, one to obtain funding.

Being so described can result in a financial windfall and some county heads from real poverty-stricken areas even joked that they were too poor to join the intense competition for the title and the resulting financial assistance.

As a local official in Hailun said, were it not for striving and rock-solid connections, it is impossible for a county to win the title.

Statistics from Hailun government show that, in 2010, average annual net income for farmers was 6,695 ($1,090).

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the national average was 5,919 yuan but it was only 3,273 yuan for 592 monitored poverty-stricken counties. How can Hailun win the title of “poverty-stricken county” with farmers earning twice the income of those in really poor counties?

The provincial poverty-alleviation offices should respond to the public’s questions as to whether it has conducted thorough investigations on applications submitted by Hailun, whether it has gone to Hailun to see the true situation and how the poverty-relief fund Hailun got over the past years was spent.

Some officials seek to illegally profit from the poverty-relief fund, the allocation and uses of which are ill supervised.

Similar problems are exposed continuously in different places. The central government must not ignore the “hotbed” for corruption and power abuse that is packaged with righteous wrapping paper.

Every penny of poverty-relief should go to the needy. Moreover, the government should transform its poverty-alleviation strategy. It is more reasonable and sustainable to teach people how to fish than just giving them fish.