贫困地区
贫困地区是指那些贫困人口数量、贫困深重程度高于其他区域的地区。改革开放以来，中国大规模的扶贫开发行动以特定时期所确定的贫困地区为工作重点。1982年，国务院在甘肃的定西地区、河西地区和宁夏的西海固地区（简称“三西地区”)划定了28个重点扶持县。1984年，《中共中央 国务院关于帮助贫困地区尽快改变面貌的通知》发布，基本奠定了全国贫困地区大致范围。《通知》指出，由于自然条件、工作基础和政策落实情况的差异，农村经济还存在发展不平衡的状况，特别是还有几千万人口的地区仍未摆脱贫困，群众的温饱问题尚未完全解决。其中绝大部分是山区和边远地区，有的还是少数民族聚居地区和革命老根据地。解决贫困地区的问题要突出重点，特别是集中力量解决十几个连片贫困地区的问题。此后的扶贫开发工作虽对贫困地区的范围有所调整，但大体遵循了上述范围界定的基本思路。1986年，国务院在全国范围内陆续确定了331个国家重点扶持贫困县。1988年，国务院在河北、内蒙古、四川、甘肃、青海和新疆的牧区中又确定了27个国家重点扶持县。各省、自治区也根据各自具体情况确定了300多个省级重点扶持县。由此，到1988年年底，全国共有贫困县664个。后来个别省、自治区增加扶持范围，全国贫困县总数达到699个。1994年，列入《国家八七扶贫攻坚计划（1994-2000年）》扶持范围的贫困县调整为592个。2001年，根据《中国农村扶贫开发纲要（2001-2010年）》的要求，中国重新确定了592个国家扶贫开发工作重点县、 14.8万个贫困村。
中共十八大以来，随着脱贫攻坚战的全面打响，贫困地区脱贫的重要性进一步凸显，被称为全面建成小康社会任务最繁重的区域，是打赢脱贫攻坚战的主战场。
Impoverished Areas
"Impoverished areas" is how China defines areas with larger impoverished populations and greater poverty than other areas. At different stages since the late 1970s China has launched large-scale poverty alleviation programs targeting different impoverished areas.
For instance, in 1982, the State Council designated 28 poor counties in Gansu Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In 1984, the central leadership issued a document entitled Notice on Helping the Impoverished Areas Improve Their Conditions, which delimited the general scope of poor areas across the country. The document pointed out that the imbalance in local natural conditions, economic development and implementation of policies resulted in imbalances in the rural economy, leaving millions of people still living in poverty with their basic needs not yet met. Most of the areas involved are mountainous or remote, and many are ethnic minority areas or old revolutionary bases. To tackle poverty, the focus should be on a dozen or so contiguous areas of extreme poverty.
Despite some adjustments over the following decades, the configuration of impoverished areas has remained more or less the same over the years.
In 1986, the State Council designated 331 key impoverished counties entitled to state assistance. Two years later in 1988, 27 more counties in Gansu, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Sichuan and Xinjiang were added to the list. Provincial-level governments also designated more than 300 counties under their jurisdiction for special support. This raised the total number of poor counties to 664 by the end of 1988. A further expansion of the scope of assistance brought the number to 699 nationwide.
According to the Seven-year Program for Lifting 80 Million People Out of Poverty (1994-2000), released in 1994, there were 592 key counties entitled for state poverty alleviation assistance across China. The number remained at 592 in the Outline for Development-oriented Poverty Alleviation of China's Rural Areas (2001-2010), involving 148,000 poor villages.
The impoverished areas are the main battlefields in China's war against poverty, as they have the toughest problems to tackle in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.