KUNMING — Southwest China's Yunnan province lifted the remaining 442,200 impoverished people out of poverty in 2020, according to the ongoing annual session of the provincial people's congress.

The 11 ethnic minority groups in the province with relatively small populations or transitioned directly from primitive society to socialist society after the founding of the People's Republic of China also bid farewell to poverty, said Wang Yubo, acting governor of Yunnan, in his government work report delivered on Jan 26.

The problem of absolute poverty that had plagued Yunnan for thousands of years has been solved historically, Wang added.

The population of impoverished rural residents in Yunnan was more than 8.8 million in 2012, and all of them have been lifted out of poverty.