The new generation of top Party leaders has paid visits to poor areas prior to Spring Festival, signaling the central authority's commitment to continue fighting poverty.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Sunday visited Dingxi in Northwest China's Gansu Province, historically one of the poorest areas in the country.

Chatting with villagers in Yuangudui, a village under the administration of Dingxi, Xi recalled the harsh living conditions he endured in the countryside of Shaanxi Province over 40 years ago. He told villagers that the Party and the government would help them improve their livelihood, reported Xinhua.

Xi also brought the 447 households in the village gifts including flour, cooking oil, pork, candies and stationery for children.

While visiting a remote village in Dongxiang autonomous county in Gansu where the majority of the residents are of the Dongxiang ethnicity, Xi urged the local government to solve the drinking water problem.

As a young man during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Xi, like millions of educated young people, went to Liangjiahe, Shaanxi to work with the farmers. In the countryside, he carried manure, hauled coal carts, farmed and built water tanks, according to a Xinhua report.

On the same day, Vice Premier Li Keqiang visited a shantytown in Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where over 900 people share one public toilet. He also went to the railway station to chat with migrant workers who were on their way home.

It's routine for Chinese leaders to visit poor areas especially around holidays, but analysts say there are signs that indicate the new leadership is placing even more emphasis on the issue of poverty and the disadvantaged.

The visits also came days after the government released the No.1 central document of the year, which for the 10th year in a row focuses on rural issues. This year's document aims to intensify favorable policies for rural areas.

In the next decade, the new leaders will focus more on impoverished rural areas in order to build a well-off society by 2020, a goal set at the 18th Party Congress, said Du Zhixiong, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Addressing the Party Congress last November, former Party chief Hu Jintao also said that the government should increase support for rural areas as well as central and western regions to improve people's lives.

"These visits draw public attention and therefore will pull more resources to these areas," said Du.

Since the 18th Party Congress last November, the leadership has made several trips to poverty-stricken rural areas to sit and chat with local people, highlighting their commitment to combating poverty.

On December 30, Xi visited the impoverished Luotuowan village deep in the mountains of Hebei Province with an annual per capita income of less than 1,000 yuan ($160) where most of the over 600 farmers live in adobe houses.

After Xi's visit, donations poured in to the village from across the country. Experts went to the village to suggest projects that might help the villagers. The village chief and some researchers are mulling eco-tourism as a way out of poverty, according to Chinese media reports.

But more systematic measures are needed if poor areas are to have sustainable growth, said Wang Sangui, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Renmin University of China.

Over the years there have been more favorable policies and financial aid to address the issue of poverty. Evaluations have shown that the government's poverty alleviation projects are effective and some of those areas experienced faster growth than rural areas on average, said Wang.

But there are also problems such as the widening income gap and unbalanced education and health resources, he added.

There are about 122 million people, or 12.7 percent of the rural population, living under the poverty line, which was raised most recently in 2011 to 2,300 yuan per person per year.

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