Presiding over a meeting on poverty relief work in Taiyuan, North China's Shanxi province, on Friday, President Xi Jinping said solving the problem of abject poverty is the focus of the poverty alleviation work at the current stage.

China's aim is to build an all-round moderately prosperous society by 2020, for which eradication of poverty is a prerequisite. While China has lifted 55.64 million people out of poverty in rural areas in the past more than four years, but the existence of abject poverty has made the poverty alleviation task more difficult and costly as the 2020 target year approaches.

Abject poverty persists in areas around the former revolutionary bases, ethnic minority regions, border regions, and places with poor infrastructure, delicate environmental conditions and prone to frequent natural disasters.

How to help the people emerge out of abject poverty and ensure they join the social mainstream are the top priorities for the later stage of China's poverty alleviation work.

Precision is a key word in Xi's war on poverty, which means taking the right measures at the right time and in the right way to overcome difficulties. Xi said at the Taiyuan meeting that the government should focus more on the poorest areas that lack funds and carry out aggressive poverty-alleviation programs, and provide them with public services, infrastructure and medical care.