"Last One Kilometer" Dilemma in Rural Poverty-alleviation Projects and Countermeasures

By examining the operation of poverty alleviation projects in Z County, this paper defines the “last one kilometer” dilemma of these projects to be both process oriented and result oriented. To be specific, the distribution of these projects lacks precision; project resources have tremendous difficulty in long term effective integration; farmers in poverty stricken areas have not yet established adequate organizations; compatibility of project benefit sharing calls for further improvement. As to the reason behind these problems, the inequality among various subjects in different positions has shaped their differentiated objective demands and logic of doing things, and informal power connection has further strengthened the “monopolistic” position of the grassroots governments and village elites. This deprives impoverished farmers of the strong intention and capability to participate in such projects. Finally, with the weakening of the project correlation, the sustainability of project benefits can hardly be guaranteed. Based on all the above discussion, this paper puts forward feasible measures to cope with the “last one kilometer” dilemma from the perspective of improving the village project integrated planning, adjusting the project management power distribution, and forging subjectivity of impoverished farmers in project participation.