Ninglang Yi Autonomous County in southwest China's Yunnan Province, one of the 52 poverty-stricken counties across the country, is taking advantage of its abundant natural resources to develop tourism and create more jobs for local people.

The income for the registered impoverished households in or near the Lugu Lake scenic spot has increased as the local villagers are getting new jobs like rowing boat for tourists, running hotels and working in restaurants.

"The annual income for my family now reaches about 50,000 yuan (about 7,128.6 U.S. dollars). It's better than before," said Liao Anrong, a local villager.

The Yunyang County of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality shook off poverty in 2018, and now the local government is cementing the achievement of poverty reduction through tourism development.

Based on a renowned scenic spot, the local people provide fruit-picking services for the tourists so as to increase income.

"Around the scenic spot, we have arranged a series of fruit-picking projects such as grapefruit, peach and grape, which alone adds more than 18 million yuan for all people of our township every year," said Zhong Shirong, a local official.

In addition, tourism has also spurred the sales of local farm produces such as black fungus, white goat, and tung oil.

At present, poverty alleviation through tourism has entered a critical period. The relevant departments and experts pointed out that it's important to innovate the way of development and improve the quality of rural tourism.

"How can we improve the quality and services of tourism in impoverished areas? In this respect, we need to cultivate more talents and to innovate. In this way, we can improve the quality, effect and revenue of tourism and make it more sustainable," said Zhang Qi, director of the China Institute for Poverty Reduction under Beijing Normal University.

China has slashed the number of people living in poverty by more than 700 million since 1978, making it the first developing country to meet the United Nations target of halving its poor population.

The Chinese government has set the end of 2020 as its target for eradicating absolute poverty, known as one of the "three tough battles" that the country must win to build a moderately prosperous society in all aspects by 2020.