Tuesday 18 / March / 2025
Poverty alleviation is a global challenge. Over the past eight years, China has lifted nearly 100 million people out of poverty, meeting the poverty eradication target set in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule and accomplishing its own poverty alleviation target as scheduled.
To answer the question of why China can eradicate absolute poverty, New China Research (NCR), a think tank of China’s Xinhua News Agency, published a research paper on February 28, in which the new concept of “Chinese Poverty Alleviation Studies” is proposed to explain China’s anti-poverty drive.
The following 10 typical cases in China’s poverty reduction practice are vivid illustrations of “Chinese Poverty Alleviation Studies”.
Case 1: Register the impoverished population and provide tailored assistance
A long-running practical problem has yet to be solved worldwide — how to accurately identify the poverty-stricken population, pin down the causes of their poverty and take customised measures for different people and households. Likewise, there was a time when China was also perplexed about how to provide targeted assistance to those in need merely with rough numbers of impoverished households but no more detailed information.
Since 2014, China has established a national poverty alleviation information system. Through unified national standards and procedures, the poverty-stricken population and households were registered and their data collected. The lists of those households were put up for public monitoring and submitted to authorities at various levels for review and approval. Supporting mechanisms of complaints and cross-department data comparison are also put in place to verify and remove “falsely registered impoverished households” and ensure the accuracy of information.
With the database containing information of all poverty-stricken population, it is obvious to see who needs to be lifted out of poverty, what progress has been made in poverty alleviation, who helps them cast off poverty, and how poverty is shaken off. All these efforts are made to ensure genuine poverty eradication.
Case 2: Targeted poverty alleviation brings the rebirth of Shibadong Village
On November 3, 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a visit to Shibadong, an impoverished Miao ethnic minority village located in China’s Hunan province, and gave an important instruction on poverty alleviation: “seeking truth from facts, acting according to local conditions, giving household-specific guidance and taking targeted measures.”
When implementing the targeted poverty alleviation policy, Shibadong Village took the lead in formulating a “seven-step method” for identifying impoverished households, with specific actions including household application, public evaluation, three-level joint review (involving village committees, township authorities and poverty alleviation task forces), public announcement, township audit, county-level approval, and household registration. Accurate identification was thus made and targeted assistance provided.
In light of local conditions, the villagers began to develop breeding and planting industries including growing kiwifruit, in sync with promoting other sectors such as catering, labour services, bed and breakfast, tourism, Miao embroidery and bottled water. The per capita income of the impoverished households increased from 1,825 yuan (280 US dollars) in 2014 to 12,483 yuan (1,930 dollars) in 2019. Walking out of the centuries-long poverty, the village has enjoyed a rebirth and demonstrated “a sea change in the mountain area.”
Case 3: East-West pairing-up paves way for regional coordinated development
Qingchuan, a county on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces in southwest China, suffered heavy damage in the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and was one of China’s least developed counties. With the support of Wuxing District of Huzhou City in east China’s Zhejiang Province, 5.4 million tea seedlings from Zhejiang have been planted in Qingchuan, a 1,517-mu (about 1,011,333 square metres) white tea garden has been built, and an industrial chain has been introduced to the county from the east coast province.
In its fight against poverty, China, through nationwide mobilisation, has set up an east-west pairing-up cooperation mechanism involving personnel support, financial aid, industrial cooperation and labour coordination. For example, Zhejiang Province, by sharing resources and drawing on each other’s strengthens with its partner region, has formed a multi-faceted industrial assistance system, including jointly building industrial cooperation parks, specialized markets with distinctive features and poverty alleviation workshops.
The robust development of poverty alleviation industries helped lift Qingchuan out of poverty in 2019. Wu Bingfang, a local official from Wuxing District, said that in the past three years, Wuxing District had invested hundreds of millions of yuan in Qingchuan to help build an industrial cluster with an annual output of 100,000 commercial-use refrigerators and its supporting projects. “It is the bounden duty of those who have become better-off to help those still lagging behind,” Wu said.
In China’s poverty alleviation endeavor, prosperous counties in east China like Wuxing District and poverty-stricken ones in the west have paired up in cooperation for poverty alleviation. As many enterprises are encouraged to invest and start businesses in the west, agricultural products sold to the east from the west are increasing, with poverty alleviation through education and health care also deployed in the region. The coordination of regional development paves way for common prosperity.
Case 4: Micro-finance instruments assist in targeted poverty alleviation
At the end of 2014, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China and China Banking Regulatory Commission created a new poverty alleviation mechanism and customized a micro-credit instrument for those registered impoverished households to run businesses and increase income.
China provides “preferential” three-year loans of no more than 50,000 yuan to poor households at benchmark interest rates without collateral or guarantees and offers financial discounts for borrowers.
Meanwhile, China has improved its rural credit system and kept the credit loans under control. It has also synergised loan investment and industrial development, taken risk management measures, and transformed the financial resources into industrial advantages and tangible results in poverty relief campaigns. A series of measures have been adopted to ensure that credit resources are “properly distributed and timely recovered,” and that they are delivered to the very households in need, just like rational use of water in a “drip irrigation system.”
Case 5: 80,000-plus photovoltaic power stations light up the “road out of poverty”
In Zigui County, near the Three Gorges Dam, in central China’s Hubei Province, 50 photovoltaic power stations have been built in recent years, with a total installed capacity of 10.86 megawatts. By the end of September 2020, these power stations had generated a total of 42,579,210 kWh of electricity. Their revenues, 45.85 million yuan (7 million dollars) in total, were all fed back to the 51 key poverty-stricken villages in the county, benefiting more than 9,200 poor households and more than 25,000 people.
These photovoltaic power projects, which utilize solar energy resources to generate power and use the profits for poverty alleviation, is called “photovoltaic poverty alleviation power stations.” In light of local conditions, the power stations are built in four types, including those for household use and those owned by village collectives, which are entrusted to a professional third party for market-oriented operation.
In the distribution of benefits, subsidies for the development of industries in poor villages, subsidies for the maintenance of public facilities in villages, and public service jobs are created in a bid to incentivize poverty-stricken people to work and avoid equal distribution.
Case 6: E-commerce brings markets closer
Longnan City in northwest China’s Gansu Province was located in a contiguous poor area in the Qinba Mountains. In recent years, by developing e-commerce, the local government has built an Internet marketing system for a batch of well-sold agricultural products such as walnuts, Chinese prickly ash, olives, Chinese medicinal herbs and honey.
Many poverty-stricken areas like Longnan have abundant high-quality agricultural products, but due to poor transportation and inadequate access to information and market, those agricultural resources couldn’t be turned into income. In its efforts to improve infrastructure in poverty-stricken areas, China has focused on improving weak links in telecommunications. At present, 98 percent of China’s poverty-stricken villages have access to fiber-optic communication, and e-commerce is available to all 832 poverty-stricken counties.
Initially guided and promoted by the government, a mechanism connecting e-commerce platforms with impoverished households has been established. With the help of new Internet business forms , the poverty alleviation program through e-commerce opened up channels of labors, logistics and information flow, shortened the time and distance of delivering products from Longnan producers to the global market, and increased the income of the poor population and regions.
Case 7: A “historic leap” — how the whole Dulong ethnic group overcomes poverty
More than 4,000 people of the Dulong ethnic group live in a remote valley in southwest China, more than 3,000 km away from Beijing. For centuries, the Dulong people toiled in the traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting and fishing there, and lived in overall poverty.
In recent years, government financial transfer payments and corporate assistance have helped the Dulongjiang Town, home to the Dulong people, to improve its infrastructure. The thatched cottages of the old days, which lay scattered in the valley, have been changed into arrays of residential houses with tap water, electricity and well-equipped facilities in good sanitary conditions.
In the past, the locals had to use a cable to slide cross the river. When the snow weather blocked the mountain roads for months, they could be completely cut off from the outside world. But all these have become history after tunnels and roads linked to the national grid were constructed.
Dulongjiang has also established agricultural pilot bases, applied innovative production technology, and carried out professional training, fostering a planting industry that not only fits the local environment but can achieve scale efficiency. Now, the township has expanded its business to other industries such as planting Zhonglou (a Chinese medicinal herb), and raising cattle and chickens. Through e-commerce, specialty products from the mountains like wild honey and morel are sold all over the country.
The per capita net income in Dulongjiang jumped from 908 yuan (140 dollars) in 2009 to 7,637 yuan (1,180 dollars) in 2019, and the poverty incidence dropped from 95.26 percent to 0.34 percent. Located deep in valleys, the town has taken a historic leap and become a symbol of China’s commitment that in its fight against poverty and building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the country will leave none of its 56 ethnic groups behind.
Case 8: Millions say goodbye to poor housing
Poverty alleviation by relocation is a leading and typical approach in China’s nationwide campaign against poverty, and it is also a once-for-all solution for the poor people living in harsh natural circumstances.
Anlong County, located in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, adheres to the principle of “relocation for production and jobs.” Four resettlement areas have been built adjacent to the old downtown area, the county’s logistics parks, industrial parks, tourist areas, and edible fungus cultivation bases, making it easy for the relocatees to get employed. Thanks to the measures, the county has developed an industrial system with edible fungi planting as a pillar industry, supplemented by pig farming as well as herb and flower planting.
Local people describe their life with three “Ones”: A household is assigned 1 mu (about 667 square meters) farming land, earning an annual income of 100,000 yuan (15,500 dollars), and casting off poverty with one job.
Case 9: Developing industry changes destiny of “the most arid barren land”
Dingxi City in northwest China’s Gansu Province had long been known as “the world’s most arid barren land.” With deep mountains and rugged gullies, the city’s impoverishment is compounded by its harsh environment, including drought in nine of ten years and frequent natural disasters. The seven counties and districts under the municipality were all key targets in the nation’s campaign of poverty alleviation.
In the anti-poverty battle, Dingxi has worked to develop industries, leveraging its distinctive advantages of planting traditional Chinese herbs, potatoes, and summer vegetables. Therefore, a development pattern is formed with seven industries as the main pillars, including raising cattle and sheep, planting vegetables and fruit, and cultivating seeds, and with several other industries as supplements, such as growing edible fungi, cereals, flowers and honeysuckle.
As these industries are growing, a poverty alleviation model based on industry development has taken shape, in which “project funds follow the poor households, the poor households follow the cooperatives, the cooperatives follow the leading enterprises, and the leading enterprises follow the market.” Thus, a new type of mechanism that integrates benefits of business operators and those of poor households is established.
Currently, more than 75 percent of the rural households in Dingxi have a stable source of income thanks to the development of industries, and 619,800 people have been lifted out of poverty by working in farming or breeding industries. The registered 842,300 residents from 200,000 impoverished households in 1,101 poverty-stricken villages and seven impoverished counties have all been raised out of poverty, and Dingxi has thus solved its millenniums-old poverty problem for good.
Case 10: Win the battle against poverty along an eco-friendly path
Given that ecological fragility and regional poverty are usually intertwined in a vicious circle, the conflict between development and ecological protection is still baffling humanity.
In China’s fight against poverty, priority has been given to ecological construction in the ecologically fragile poor areas. Poverty-stricken people are employed for afforestation and local ecological restoration, a dual-purpose method to increase the income of the poor population and protect the environment. In some poor areas where ecological resources abound, emphasis has been placed on developing ecological industries, which capitalize on ecological resources to create more opportunities for the poor to augment income.
By implementing the ecological compensation system, local authorities can create ecological management and protection jobs to help conserve ecological resources, practically turning lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets. Now a large multitude of woodcutters and sheepherders have become forest and grassland rangers.
