NANGANGZI VILLAGE, Aug. 26(Xinhuanet)-- A modern and booming city that one sees through a glimpse of Beijing is featured by skyscrapers overlooking streets of overparked cars with multicolored lights lit up the city at the night.

But here in the quiet Nangangzi Village of neighboring Hebei Province, only 15 kilometers from Beijing's boundary, the 74-year-old Zhang Jianzhi seems to live in a different world.

Zhang's family lives in a three-roomed earthen house built about four decades ago equipped with only one 15-watt light for cutting their expenses. A cooking stove stands at the middle of the leading room of their house and the two other bedrooms each has an adobe"kang," or heatable earthen sleeping platform, with shabby, worn-out beddings. A date wood cabinet, the sole furniture of the family, which fades with the times, stands in one of the bedrooms.

A dirt, muddy road is still the only route leading the village to the outside world.

Zhang's village in the Fengning Manchu Autonomous Region is left far behind China's fast economic development since the country adopted a reform and opening-up policy over two decades ago and it seems that it does not enjoy the benefits from economic boom brought about by China's entry into the World Trade Organization over three years ago.

People living around cities in the Yangtze River delta in the east and in the Pearl River delta in the south, both economic powerhouses, have gradually improved their living standards. They have more jobs provided by local commercial businesses, workshops or factories which manufacture products for export. The two delta areas are also the main absorbers of China's millions of rural surplus laborers looking for good fortunes.

In the city proper of the national capital Beijing, with their income on rise, many people have bought commercial apartments each worth 600,000 yuan(74,000 US dollars) and even 100 million yuan (12.3 million US dollars). And shopping malls are often jammed with customers buying cosmetics, fashionable dresses or just as pastime.

"Life is really hard," said Zhang nevertheless. "My husband had been paralyzed and confined to bed for years before he died, and now I'm heavily in debt."

She has four sons. Her 53-year-old eldest son married into a neighboring village years ago and three other sons remained single.

"We have little money and no one wants to marry into my family," Zhang said with sigh.

Zhang's hardship was verified by a report published last week on the socioeconomic development strategy of Hebei Province, jointly drawn up by Chinese and foreign experts with the aid from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

A"poverty belt" exists around Beijing and Tianjin, two cities that are sandwiched in Hebei Province, the report says. The "belt" covers 24 counties in northern Hebei, where more than 1.8 million people live.

The annual per capita income of farmers in suburban Beijing has reached up to 7,000 yuan (about 870 US dollars) while that for farmers in the 24 counties around averages less than 2,000 yuan (about 250 US dollars), said Guo Gengmao, vice-governor of Hebei, in an interview.

Guo ascribed the unbalanced development partly to sacrifices these counties have made in support of the development of Beijing and Tianjin. For instance, some counties have closed their enterprises to cut water and electricity consumption so as to guarantee supplies for the big cities.

Regional disparities, such as a wide gap between the economically developed eastern coastal and less-developed western regions, and gap between the cities and countryside, are not new phenomena in China's vast territory. But such coexistence of haves and have-nots in such a proximity is startling to economists and government departments.

Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan said during a recent trip to Hebei Province that Beijing could not maintain long-term sustained growth without the development in neighboring regions and promised to lend a helping hand.

But to Zhang, the hard life is still like a high mountain she can never climb over.

Zhang's second eldest son takes care of her at home and grows crops on less than one hectare of sterile hilly land, which only produces more than 200 kilograms of corn annually due to sustained drought in recent years. Zhang's third and fourth sons, one working at a construction site in Beijing and the other one working at a tourism resort as a security guard in Fengning grassland, earn some 3,000 yuan (about 370 US dollars) a year. But sometimes, he fails to get the full payment.

Zhang said, the less than one hectare of farmland is their only source of food and they wear worn-out clothes their relatives givethem. Sometimes, they have to borrow grains to tide over their hard time and essential money to go to see doctors.

"We have no meat and wheat flour for a long period of time," Zhang said. "Sometimes, I used 1.5 kilograms of corn to exchange for 0.5 kilograms of wheat flour, and I'm loath to do so." Zhang said.

Some warn the "poverty belt" where Zhang's village is located might cause a series of social problems if not coped with promptly.

The unbalanced development in the Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei areas might prompt people in less developed regions to flock to prosperous cities, such as Beijing and Tianjin, to seek their fortune, which in turn adds pressure of urban population growth and form new needy groups in urban areas, said Li Lan, head of the Macro-economy Institute of the Hebei Provincial Development and Reform Committee.

Worse still, the "poverty belt" will impose a great threat to the ecological safety of Beijing and Tianjin, Li acknowledged. The "belt" region is the source of water supply for Beijing and Tianjin and serves as an ecological shelter for the two cities and other cities in northern Hebei.

Relevant government departments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province have realized the importance to deal with unbalanced development in the region.

The Hebei report on socioeconomic development for the first time proposed that a pilot ecological and economic development zone covering Beijing, Tianjin and northern Hebei should be established to cope with the unbalanced growth and protect and improve ecological development in these areas.

"This is a good signal," said Li Lan, "To achieve economic growth and improve ecology through concerted efforts are the fundamental ways out for eliminating poverty in the region."

The Chinese government has attached great importance to poverty reduction and narrowing regional disparities which serves its target to build a comparatively affluent society in which everybody benefits from the social and economic development.

The central government launched a strategy to develop its less-developed vast western region in more than five years ago and encouraged businesses in fast-developed eastern regions to invest in west region to boost local development.

Boosting rural economy and raising farmers' income have been ontop of the government work agenda. Last year, a policy was put into effect to cut taxes on farmers for the purpose of narrowing rural-urban gap.

By the end of 2004, China's impoverished population has reduced to 29 million, calculated on the basis of a per-capita income of 637 yuan (80 US dollars) annually, from former 250 million for 25 five years ago, thanks to the government's poverty reduction efforts.

China, however, still has a long way to go to uproot poverty, said an official with the State Council, who is in charge of poverty reduction. The country's impoverished population could exceed 80 million if the poverty line is raised to 1,000 yuan (about 120 US dollars). In big cities like Beijing, there are still quite a few people living on basic living subsidies of several hundred yuan monthly, granted by the government.

In crucial judgement, there has been progress in the Nangangzi Village.

Village head Lu Zhangyang, said currently 37 of the village's 135 households own telephones and half of the households have TV sets, bought in the most recent several years. Last year, the per capita income of the villagers was 1,082 yuan (133 US dollars), much higher than in the past.

The government has funded to sink five wells for local villagers to irrigate their cropland and the supporting irrigation facilities are under construction, said Lu, adding that these projects would hopefully help raise grain output. And that might ensure Zhang and her fellow villagers have foreseeable improvement in their lives. Enditem