A farmer in Gansu province is busy harvesting potatoes. (PHOTO: CHINA DAILY)

The central government plans to spot-check 283 counties which claimed they had been lifted out of poverty last year, a senior official said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Xia Gengsheng, deputy director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said 60 counties will be randomly selected for the assessment, scattered across 22 provincial districts in the western and central regions.

Xia said reviewers will visit about 1,000 families in each county to see if the poverty rate dropped below 2 percent in central regions or 3 percent in western regions, and whether local residents were content with relief measures.

Third-party evaluators will also be employed to make sure the results are accurate, he said.

Local authorities, if found fabricating relief figures, will face severe punishment, he added.

The review was the first of its kind since the central government released a guideline on winning the battle against poverty between 2018 and 2020.

The guideline required the central government to review if locally approved label-removing reached standards set by central authorities.

China aims to eliminate absolute poverty domestically by the end of next year. Removing the poverty label – which requires a dramatic decline in the poverty rate – is considered a crucial step to accomplish the zero-poverty goal.