Targeted Poverty Alleviation: China’s Road of Poverty Reduction Toward Common Prosperity

Abstract

Before the reform and opening-up, farmers in China were generally poor and worked hard for survival. Only those in extreme poverty had access to poverty relief. Reform and opening-up initiated the road of poverty reduction in rural China, which can be divided into two major stages. From 1978 to 2012, China mainly implemented rural development-oriented poverty alleviation, continuously raised poverty standards, increased investment, and innovated poverty alleviation methods. Under the joint action of high-speed economic growth, large-scale rural labor transfer, international cooperation, and other factors, a sustained and large-scale poverty reduction was achieved. From 2013 to 2020, in order to utterly eliminate absolute poverty, China creatively implemented targeted poverty alleviation, launched the final battle against poverty, increased investment on a large scale, and sent personnel to the countryside for poverty alleviation, and as a result lifted all poor counties, poor villages, and nearly 100 million poor people out of poverty on schedule. Poverty reduction achievements in rural China include such 5 aspects as elimination of absolute poverty, accelerated increase of the poor’s income and consumption level, constant improvement of their life quality and basic public service, resolution of overall regional poverty, and enhancement of social governance capability in poverty-stricken areas. During the past 42 years of reform and opening-up, China has lifted more than 700 million farmers out of poverty, achieved the largest poverty reduction in the world, solved the “last mile” problem of poverty reduction, successively achieved the poverty reduction goal in the UN Millennium development goals and the 2030 sustainable development agenda ahead of schedule, created a miracle of global poverty reduction, and made China’s contribution to global poverty reduction and improvement of human development index by providing Chinese approach and efforts. The report summarizes China’s experience in getting rid of poverty from six aspects, which can be reduced as being based on the national conditions, adhering to the people-centered development thought, constantly improving the shared development strategy, always putting rural poverty reduction in an important position, and choosing a comprehensive poverty reduction road. Many elements of China’s poverty reduction experience can be generally used for reference by other developing countries, especially the methods of solving the “last mile” problem of poverty reduction. The report ends with a brief prospect of the strategic transformation of solving relative poverty and moving toward common prosperity and strengthening international cooperation in poverty reduction in the next stage.