The country's poverty alleviation work is facing tougher challenges with the approach of the 2020 deadline for its ambitious poverty-eradication plan, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday, while calling on officials to make greater efforts to help poverty-stricken people.

The Communist Party of China has made a solemn promise to lift all remaining poverty-stricken people out of that status by the end of 2020, said Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Xi made the remarks at a panel discussion with lawmakers from Sichuan province during the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress, the top legislature. Mountainous Sichuan, with many ethnic groups, has 3.8 million people living in poverty.