深度贫困地区
作为中国经济社会发展不充分、不均衡的产物，贫困问题本身亦存在贫困程度的差异，而深度贫困地区则是贫困地区中贫困程度深重，脱贫难度较大的区域。习近平指出，脱贫攻坚本来就是一场硬仗，而深度贫困地区脱贫攻坚是这场硬仗中的硬仗。
深度贫困地区主要是指以下三类地区：一是连片的深度贫困地区，如西藏和四省藏区、南疆四地州、四川凉山、云南怒江、甘肃临夏等地区，生存环境恶劣，致贫原因复杂，基础设施和公共服务缺口大，贫困发生率普遍在20%左右。二是深度贫困县，据国务院扶贫办对全国最困难的20%的贫困县所做的分析，贫困发生率平均在23%，县均贫困人口近3万人，分布在14个省区。三是贫困村，全国12.8万个建档立卡贫困村居住着60%的贫困人口，基础设施和公共服务严重滞后，村两委班子能力普遍不强，四分之三的村无合作经济组织，三分之二的村无集体经济，无人管事、无人干事、无钱办事现象突出。
Severely Impoverished Areas
As a result of inadequate and unbalanced economic and socialdevelopment, different areas in China face different levels of poverty. Severely impoverished areas are areas with extreme poverty and are the most difficult places to eliminate poverty. In the words of Xi Jinping, the fight against poverty is itself a tough one, and the fight in the severely impoverished areas is the toughest of all.
The severely impoverished areas in China include the following:
(1) Contiguous areas of extreme poverty: Tibet, the Tibetan ethnic areasin Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, the four prefectures in southern Xinjiang (Hotan, Aksu, Kashi and the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture), and the three prefectures (Liangshan in Sichuan, Nujiang in Yunnan and Linxia in Gansu). These places suffer extremely poor living conditions; there are complex causes of poverty and a great shortage of infrastructure and public services, and the poverty headcount ratio remains at 20 percent;
(2) Counties suffering extreme poverty: According to an analysis of 20 percent of China’s poorest counties conducted by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, these counties are scattered across 14 provinces and autonomous regions, and have an average poverty headcount ratio of 23 percent, each with an average of nearly 30,000 impoverished people; and
(3) Poor villages: There are 128,000 poor villages, where live 60 percent of China’s poor population. Their infrastructure and public services lag far behind, and their Party branches and villagers’ committees are very weak. Three quarters of these villages have no cooperatives and two-thirds have no collective economy. No one is responsible for village affairs, no one takes the initiative to do poverty alleviation work, and the villages have no money for projects.