Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday declared victory in an eight-year drive to eradicate extreme poverty in the world’s most populous nation, a key goal of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“We have achieved in a timely manner the poverty alleviation goal of the new era,” Xi said at a meeting of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, China’s supreme decisionmaking body, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The incomes of nearly 100 million people had moved above China’s official poverty line — defined as those who earn less than 11 yuan (US$1.68) per day, he said.
Photo: Bloomberg
After assuming leadership of the CCP eight years ago, Xi made the drive to eliminate extreme poverty by this year one of his top goals.
The party defines it as a step toward achieving what it calls a “moderately prosperous” society, a key part of its moves to improve living standards and underpin its claim to political legitimacy.
The anti-poverty campaign has been focused on rural areas which largely escaped COVID-19 transmission in China this year.
Tens of millions of migrant workers from the countryside were estimated to have lost their jobs due to the closure of factories in the first quarter of the year when China implemented nationwide lockdowns. Gauges of employment have largely recovered since then.
“The declaration tells us more about how the Chinese government defines poverty than about actual levels of deprivation and substantive improvements in people’s lives,” said Sarah Rogers, a lecturer in contemporary China studies at the University of Melbourne who has studied the anti-poverty campaign. “I’m not convinced the campaign has addressed the underlying drivers of deprivation, disempowerment and stark inequality in China”
Earlier this year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s (李克強) set off a nationwide debate on poverty alleviation when he reminded the public that two-fifths of China’s population earned just 1,000 yuan per month on average.
“It’s not even enough to rent a room in a medium-sized Chinese city,” he said during the annual national parliament meeting in May.
The anti-poverty campaign has involved a massive mobilization of state resources, with tens of millions of people relocated from remote villages to newly built homes closer to urban centers.
Elderly and disabled rural residents have received cash handouts and the government has launched schemes to find jobs for the unemployed or those dependent on subsistence farming.
Xi described the achievement, which was given top-billing in state media yesterday, as the result of the “largest and most vigorous battle in human history against poverty.”
China’s poverty line is slightly below the absolute poverty level of the World Bank, at market exchange rates.
China last month removed the final nine counties, all in the mountainous Guizhou Province, from a national list of impoverished counties, Xinhua reported last month.
The average income in those counties had reached 11,487 yuan per year, it said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS