TAIYUAN — North China's Shanxi province has lifted its entire poor population out of poverty, local authorities said.

A total of 21,600 people registered as impoverished in the province shook off poverty this year, said the provincial poverty alleviation and development office at a recent press briefing.

Since the beginning of this year, local authorities have taken poverty relief measures targeted at the segment of the population that remained poor, providing various types of assistance to everyone in need, said Zhang Jiancheng, deputy director of the office.

In 2020, local authorities provided public service jobs to over 6,000 people who were unemployed or were unable to come out of poverty through their own efforts.

In 2014, 3.29 million people and 7,993 villages in Shanxi were termed poor, with the poverty headcount ratio at 13.6 percent.

China has vowed to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020.