Why China becomes the first country that has shaken off poverty?
The declaration of Guizhou Provincial People’s Government that its nine remaining poor counties successfully “doffed the poverty hat” last November heralds the whole country’s shaking off poverty. Thus, China becomes the first country in the world that puts an end to the poverty issue, which is 10 years ahead of the poverty reduction goal of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. China’s achievements in poverty alleviation are therefore referred to as “China’s Miracle”.
According to the relevant statistics, over 850 million people in China have rid themselves of absolute poverty since the reform and opening up, which means China has contributed over 70 percent to the cause of the global poverty reduction. From 2012 on, every 2.24 seconds have witnessed one Chinese out of poverty. Over 570 million rural residents have moved to secure shelters, and nearly 100 million impoverished population have been relocated to other places from the remote mountainous areas. And the per capita living space of the rural residents has expanded five times. These figures of China’s poverty reduction are amazing to the whole world.
Why can China win the war against poverty within merely four decades? We can unearth the underlying causes.
First, China’s “economic miracle” of the four decades keeps fueling its anti-poverty course. Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy grew at an annual rate of 9.5 percent, which serves as the driving force of the improvement of people’s family income and life quality. The booming economy has created large numbers of jobs for the rural and urban residents, which became their main income source. The economic development also increased the tax revenues, enabling the government to have sufficient financial resources to deal with the poverty issue.
Second, the forceful leadership of the CPC and the Chinese government ensure the constant progress of poverty alleviation. The 19th National Congress of CPC deemed the anti-poverty war as one of the three wars for building a moderately well-off society and also as the strategic task for achieving its first centennial goal. The unitary governmental system empowers the central government to mobilize all the social resources and command local governments of all levels to implement its measures for eradicating poverty. It is the “People First” thought held by the Party and the government that determines the firm belief that China must eradicate poverty and achieve common prosperity.
Third, the Chinese government keeps innovating its mechanism and policies for poverty alleviation. It has taken different approaches during its historical course of fighting against poverty. In the early phase, the government used to provide direct temporary relief to the impoverished households but such an approach didn’t achieve very much. From the mid-1990s, the government began to take a development-oriented approach. Instead of giving direct material relief, it encouraged the poor areas to develop industries to increase job opportunities for the impoverished people and provided them with vocational training so that they can grasp at least one skill of earning a living. In 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed a new anti-poverty approach, i.e. “targeted poverty alleviation”, which requires precise identification of impoverished persons, precise arrangement of anti-poverty projects, precise use of anti-poverty funds, precise measures to the impoverished households, precise allocation of anti-poverty personnel to the impoverished villages, and precise assessment of anti-poverty achievements. This approach effectively identifies the impoverished people group, so that corresponding anti-poverty measures can be taken.
Fourth, all the social sectors participate in the anti-poverty war. Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism and also the shared goal we strive for. Under the leadership of CPC, the whole nation joined in the war against poverty. Entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and people from all walks of life would provide their manpower and material resources to support the poverty alleviation every year. Many enterprises went to invest in the impoverished regions in response to the government’s appeal. Over 2.9 million cadres from the Party and governments or state-owned enterprises went to serve as the “First Secretary to the impoverished villages” to lead the people there or villages to find their appropriate ways out of poverty. The joint efforts of the whole society merge into a very solid force that enables China to have the capacity to deal with any difficulties in the anti-poverty war.
As the largest developing country in the world, Chinese people are proud of such institutional and policy advantages. The social resources can always be mobilized by the government in a very short time to deal with the national problems. However, such anti-poverty programs in many countries will either await a long time or even not be implemented due to the lack of enough policy or financial support. In the course of anti-poverty, the Chinese government explored different means to eradicate poverty, such as projects of infrastructure, industrial development, education, health insurance, ecological environment protection, etc, and many of the projects achieved great results of poverty alleviation.
China’s success in poverty alleviation symbolizes human’s great victory over poverty, proving that poverty can be defeatable under the joint efforts of a nation with solidarity. China has undoubtedly set itself a good example in the aspect. Currently, the ever-impoverished people in China are pursuing better lives after meeting their basic material needs. In order to establish a community with shared future for mankind and contribute to the welfare of human beings, China shall intensify its international cooperation and share its wisdom and experience of anti-poverty to other underdeveloped countries. In other words, China’s anti-poverty stories shall be heard and emulated by these countries.
This commentary reflects the author’s personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Global Engagement Academy Shandong University (Weihai).
Li Xiaohua, Ph.D candidate of School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai University .
李小华， 上海大学外国语学院博士生
