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Xi Jinping declares ‘complete victory’ over rural poverty in China
Chinese state media called the achievement a “miracle” and said it was under Xi’s leadership that nearly 100 million people had been lifted out of poverty
President Xi Jinping on Thursday announced “complete victory”, led by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), against rural poverty in China at an event in Beijing celebrating one of his signature policy initiatives since taking office in 2012.
“Shaking off poverty is not the finish line, but the starting line of a new life and new endeavour,” Xi Jinping said at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing where he presented medals to key figures in the poverty fight.
“A human miracle has been created that will go down in history,” Xi added.
Chinese state media called the achievement a “miracle” and said it was under Xi’s leadership that nearly 100 million people had been lifted out of poverty. Reports called it a gift for 100th the anniversary of the party, coming up later this year.
The Communist party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, lauded the “historic leap” led by Xi.
China will not forget those 1,800 people who sacrificed their lives while fighting on the front lines of China’s battle against poverty, Xi said, adding that they represented the original aspiration and mission of CPC members.
State media reports said in the last eight years, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line have all been lifted out of poverty.
“Since the launch of the reform and opening up in the late 1970s, 770 million impoverished rural residents have shaken off poverty when calculated in accordance with China’s current poverty line,” news agency Xinhua said.
China vowed to stick with its poverty alleviation policies, while making some adjustments for a five-year transition towards what Beijing calls “rural revitalisation” in a “No. 1 policy document” released on Sunday.
The current rural poverty line, according to a Xinhua report in December 2020, is 2,300 yuan per person per year at the 2010 price level. “The specific figure is subject to adjustment as the country’s price levels change. In 2019, the poverty line was 3,218 yuan (about $490.61)” - the equivalent of $1.34 per day.
Indermit Gill, a non-resident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development programme at Brookings Institution, wrote last month that the World Bank believes that a threshold of $1.90 a day is appropriate for countries with per capita incomes of less than $1,000 or so, such as Ethiopia.
“For lower middle-income countries such as India - with per capita incomes between $1,000 and about $4,000 - it recommends a poverty line of $3.20 a day.”
“For upper middle-income countries like China, it reckons that a reasonable poverty line is $5.50 a day. In other words, the Chinese government uses a poverty line appropriate for a country making the transition from low to lower middle-income, even though China is 10 times as wealthy,” Gill wrote.
The urban poverty line is also different from the rural definition of poverty in China. There is no unified standard for the whole country.
