Students work on their lessons in a classroom in a poverty-stricken village in Northwest China's Gansu province, March 16, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

With most of the Chinese people having freed from poverty over the past decades, most of the impoverished places left lie in remote and mountainous areas where general economic development and poverty relief methods hardly work.

According to statistics, the funds used to fight poverty by the central government have nearly doubled from 2011 to 2014, but the number of people lifted out of poverty during that time dropped from 43 million in 2011 to 12 million in 2014.

Facing the tough problem of poverty, traditional approaches for relief need an overhaul.

Chang Zongyi is a farmer living in Xihaigu, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, which was listed as one of the world's most uninhabitable places by the United Nations.

His house has a crack from the ceiling to the floor, and he is eligible to receive a 22,000 yuan housing renovation subsidy provided by government. But he did not, because Chang could not afford his portion of the renovation.

To build a brick house, he needs to pay another 60,000 yuan. That's more than he can afford, Chang said.

Most of the renovation subsidies that are meant to help the poorest go to relatively better-off families because the poorest households often cannot afford their portions of the cost, a local official said.

"The method of extensive poverty relief used in the past no longer works when it comes to the most impoverished families. Targeted relief and customized policy are needed to help each household in poverty," said Wang Sangui, a poverty problem expert.