To achieve the goal of eliminating the impoverished population in China by 2020, local authorities have been making great efforts in poverty alleviation work recently. However, media outlets have reported that some poverty relief projects led by local governments have forced local farmers to participate, which didn't help the farmers escape poverty but instead resulted in great losses for some impoverished rural households.

Poverty relief has become an important task for local governments because it directly relates to the evaluation of officials' political performance. That is why many local officials make every endeavor in this work.

But targeted poverty alleviation is a systematic program that requires scientific deployment as well as implementation. Local authorities should provide specific support and favorable policies to impoverished rural residents according to their actual situations, which requires investigation and research before action.

However, some local authorities carry out their poverty relief programs without conducting any investigation and compulsorily require impoverished farmers to participate in them, while totally ignoring the actual effects.

Compulsory poverty relief programs go against the meaning and intent of targeted poverty alleviation, and may even undermine local rural residents' interests. Authorities should evaluate the effects of their poverty relief efforts.