New apartments and workshops are being constructed in Dahua county, Guangxi, to help people relocating from remote rural areas. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The county government's relocation cost will likely be 240,000 yuan, including housing subsidy, for every poor family until then, Zhu Youkui, a top official of the region, says.

Overall, Guangxi aims to spend 60 billion yuan on relocating more than 1 million poor people by 2020. He says the main objectives are to move out the poor from vulnerable areas, settle them down in places with better connectivity and resources, and help them find jobs and receive technical training, especially among the middle-aged.

"The government has tried to move the affected people to places that aren't too far away from where they originally lived," Zhu, the chief economist for the Guangxi government's poverty alleviation program, says in response to a question about those that might fear a loss of familiarity owing to relocation.

There are very few examples of county-to-county relocations in Guangxi, he says in Nanning.

In addition to areas with a harsh topography, people are also relocated from remote villages where only a handful of families reside and investing in roads, for instance, seem financially infeasible for the local administrations. The prefecture-level cities of Hechi in the north and Baise, which borders Vietnam, have become Guangxi's major relocation hubs.

Zhu says typically three years are needed to complete the process of a single mass relocation.

But challenges lie ahead.

"Among them is the sustainability of livelihoods of the resettled."

The central government has said nationwide 3.4 million people living in poverty will be moved out of remote areas this year.

Zhang Li contributed to this story.