26.1m Chinese still desperately poor

About 26.1m of China's 1.3bn people are still desperately poor, most of them living in the countryside, with another 22m urban dwellers surviving on a minimum living allowance, state media reported, quoting the minister of civil affairs on Tuesday. The official poverty line is US$81 per capita per year. Another 49.77m in the countryside eke out a living on less than US$112 per capita per year, amid a deepening concern that China's wealth gap is growing.