A government official said as many as 100 million poor people in China do not receive state assistance because the poverty line has been set too low, a newspaper reported Thursday.

China's official poverty line of 680 yuan (US$85; euro66) per person a year, or 1.86 yuan (23 US cents; 18 euro cents) a day, fails to reflect the country's average standard of living, the China Daily newspaper cited Wu Zhong, a member of the Office of Poverty Alleviation, as saying.

The measure represents the lowest 20 percent of incomes in the countryside, the report said.

At the end of last year, 23.65 million Chinese lacked adequate food, clothing and shelter, according to government figures, the report said.

But Wu said 120 million to 130 million live on less than US$1 a day _ the international measure of poverty.

"So another 100 million poor people have not been categorized as poor and therefore are not getting the help they need," he said at a symposium on poverty and international cooperation in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province.

Many millions have benefited from China's swift economic growth.

But incomes in rural China lag behind those in the cities, and millions of factory workers have been laid off from defunct state-run factories. Widespread drought and perennial flooding have added to the misery of those scraping by in the vast, underdeveloped countryside.