How China became poverty free

country?
Chinese President Xi Jinping says his country has achieved the "miracle" of eradicating extreme
poverty. His government says that over an eight-year period, nearly 100 million people have been
lifted out of poverty. Speaking at a ceremony in Beijing, Mr Xi said it was a "complete victory" that
would "go down in history".
But some experts have questioned the way this has been measured. In China, extreme poverty is
defined as earning less than $620 (£440) a year. In his speech on Thursday, Mr Xi said the "arduous
task of eradicating extreme poverty has been fulfilled".
"According to the current criteria, all 98.99 million poor rural populations have been taken out of
poverty, and 832 poverty-stricken counties as well as 128,000 villages have been removed from the
poverty list," he said.
Eradicating rural poverty has been a key initiative of Mr Xi's since he came to power in 2012.
China announced late last year that it had removed the last remaining counties from a list of poor
regions, which officials said meant it had achieved the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the
end of 2020. At the ceremony on Thursday, Mr Xi handed out medals to key figures in the poverty
fight. But some experts say that China has set a low bar in its definition of poverty, and that on-going
investment is needed in its poorest areas. The threshold set by China to define extreme poverty
amounts to $1.69 a day at current exchange rates, compared to the World Bank's global threshold of
$1.90, Reuters news agency reports.
China’s success in poverty reduction has attracted worldwide attention. In 1982, China launched the
“Sanxi Program” in the poorest regions in Gansu and Ningxia, marking the beginning of planned,
organized and large-scale poverty alleviation efforts nationwide. In 1986, the government
established the State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development, identified poor
counties, set a national poverty line, and created special funds for poverty alleviation. In 1994, China
launched the Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program that was designed to lift 80 million
people out of absolute poverty within seven years from 1994 to 2000. In 2001 and 2011, two ten-
year poverty alleviation programs were launched to continue the war against poverty. During those
three decades, the number of poor people fell sharply, and living conditions and access to public
services improved markedly in the poorer regions. 
Between 1978 and 2010, the number of poor people in China fell from 250 million to 26.88 million
measured with the 1986 official poverty line. Measured with the 2011 poverty line, the number of
poor people fell from 165.67 million in 1978 to 55.75 million in 2015. Between 1981 and 2011, the
global poor population fell from 1,938 million to 1,011 million measured at US$1.25 a day, with 927
million people lifted out of poverty. In the same period, the number of poor people in China fell from
838 million to 84.17 million, with 753 million people lifted out of poverty.
China became the first developing country to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of
halving poverty. Between 1990 and 2011, China lifted 439 million poor people out of poverty,
contributing significantly to global poverty reduction. With continuous increase in grain production
for 11 years since 2004, China has been able to feed nearly 20% of the world’s population with less
than 10% of world’s cultivated land. In the same period, per capita incomes among rural farmers
increased rapidly. Since 2001, per capita rural net incomes in poverty-stricken counties have
increased faster than the national average. Rural infrastructure and public services have improved
markedly, including electrification, universal access to compulsory education, rural minimum living
standards guarantee scheme, and new rural cooperative medical care.  
The country’s poverty reduction offers lessons for other countries. China has carried out poverty
reduction in a globalized context, driven by fast economic growth and focused on building poor
people’s capacity for self-development. Its approach combines government leadership and support
from all social sectors with farmers playing a major role, and integrates general and special
favourable policies, poverty alleviation programs and social safety nets.
China’s experience in poverty alleviation entails:  

1. Continuous reform and innovation; sustained and steady economic growth with policies
favouring poor regions and poor people.
2. Integrating poverty alleviation into the national development strategy, and organizing large-
scale poverty alleviation programs with targeted programs for women, children, disabled
people and ethnic minorities;
3. Adopting a development-oriented poverty alleviation approach that focuses on
development as the fundamental way to get out of poverty, and building poor people’s
capacity to help them.
4. Pursuing a strategy of balanced urban and rural economic-social development, getting
industry to support agriculture and cities to support rural areas.         
5. Developing infrastructure, including roads, water and sanitation, electrification, natural gas
supply and housing.
6. Mobilizing all resources for poverty reduction, including both public and private sectors.
7. Integrating general and special favourable policies, development-oriented poverty
alleviation and social safety nets. 

In the next five years, China, as the biggest developing country in the world, is entering a critical
stage of its efforts to build a well-off society, and facing a number of new challenges in poverty
reduction.

By the end of 2015, 55.75 million Chinese people lived in poverty, equivalent to the population of a
medium-sized country. The nation still has 14 poor regions, 832 poor counties, and 128,000 poor
villages. It will be a hard task to help the remaining poor, as they live in deep poverty and lack self-
development capacity. And it will become increasingly difficult and costly. But there is no time to
loose. To eliminate extreme poverty by 2020, 10 million people have to be lifted out of poverty each
year for the next four years. Their vulnerability means that they are very likely to fall back into
poverty due to disaster, illness, and education and housing costs.

China also faces many new problems, such as economic slowdown and industrial restructuring,
inadequate targeting mechanism, poorly defined responsibilities, inefficient allocation and use of
resources, and lack of effective policy coordination among poverty alleviation, rural minimum living
standards guarantee, new rural cooperative medical care, medical assistance, dilapidated housing
rehabilitation and education assistance, and lack of adaptation to local conditions and specific
guidance. 

The government has set a target to lift all rural poor people and poor counties out of poverty by
2020 during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), as part of the goal to build a well-off society. In
November 2015, it released the decision on winning the fight against poverty, providing a roadmap
for poverty reduction and calling for mobilization of all resources to win the anti-poverty war.

In the next five years, China will pursue targeted poverty alleviation policies and strive to reduce
poverty through development of industries, labour migration, relocation, and minimum living
standards guarantee scheme. The government will increase fiscal spending and financial support,
strengthen land policy, mobilize private resources, and create a favourable environment. It also
focuses on defining poverty alleviation responsibilities of governments at all levels, developing a
rigorous monitoring and evaluation system, and establishing an exit mechanism for poor counties.