Established in Feb. 1990, the National Training Center of Cadres in Poverty-stricken Regions is an institution directly under the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development. Its main duty is to train the party and administrative cadres of the poverty-stricken regions of the whole country on poverty alleviation and development and to instruct the training of the cadres in the poverty-stricken rural areas and training of the peasants on practical technologies. Ever since its establishment, the Training Center has completed several rounds of large-scaled training to the cadres at county level in the poverty-stricken regions of the country with the state’s program of poverty alleviation and development as the main target and crucial task. Nearly 20,000 person-times of training have been offered, which help them to improve the awareness, learn the policies and update the concept in respect to poverty alleviation and development. The Training Center has successively compiled training textbooks in seven series (theory and policy series, economics series, enterprise management series, project management series, administrative management series, small-amount credit loan series and practical technology series) , 30 categories and 90 sub-categories, and totally 300,000 copies have been circulated. Meanwhile, the Training Center has undertaken some international cooperation projects and investigation and study works.
 
    Chinese Service Center of Poverty Alleviation and Development was founded in April 1988 as an    institution directly under the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development. Its main duty is to provide concrete services for the economic development of the poverty-stricken regions. The tasks includes:
      (1) Provide the information services in aspects of labor, talents, technology, products and capital to the poverty-stricken regions and progressively establish the technical market, talent market and material market in pertinence to the needs of the poverty-stricken regions; 
      (2) Organize the training and exportation of labor; 
      (3) Opening up the linkage of the poverty-stricken regions with the outside world, organize the commodity circulation and develop domestic and foreign trade; and 
      (4) Popularize the agricultural applied technologies in pertinence to the conditions of the poverty-stricken regions.
 
    So far these two centers share the same office and staff.