Targeted poverty alleviation and its practices in rural China: A case study of Fuping county, Hebei Province
Introduction
Poverty has long been a global problem (Haushofer and Fehr, 2014; Liu et al., 2017), and eradicating poverty has become one of the severest challenges faced by developing countries in achieving sustainable development (UN, 2015b). According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, despite significant progress in global poverty reduction, over 836.0 million people continued to live in extreme poverty in 2015, lacking access to adequate food, clean drinking water and sanitation (UN, 2015a). Poverty used to be considered as an economic phenomenon and referred to conditions under which individuals or households could not afford basic living necessities (Hagenaars and van Praag, 1985; Liu et al., 2017). From a comprehensive perspective, poverty not only refers to the scarcity of material, social and cultural resources, but also involves the lack of capabilities, opportunities and access to social services (Sen, 1976; Alkire and Foster, 2011; Guo et al., 2018). Scholars have developed a series of methods for measuring poverty, including the income-consumption standard (Ravallion et al., 1991), human development index (HDI) (UNDP, 2010) and multidimensional poverty index (MPI) (Alkire, 2011; Alkire and Foster, 2011). MPI, in particular, has been widely used to reveal poverty in different regions (Ayala et al., 2011) and countries (Alkire et al., 2014). These understandings and methods have guided the formulation of public policies in poor areas to reduce poverty and prevent deprivation.
China is the largest developing country in the world and once had the largest rural poverty-stricken population (Liu et al., 2017, 2018), which has hampered its social and economic development. Poverty thus has attracted widespread attention from scholars in such disciplines as sociology, geography, economics and development studies. These studies mainly focus on the delimitation of poverty lines (Tong and Lin, 1994; Liu, 2003; Zhang and Zhang, 2010), types of poverty (Liu and Xu, 2016; Wang and Wang, 2016; Chen et al., 2017; Wang and Chen, 2017), regional differences of poverty (Yao et al., 2004; Ravallion and Chen, 2007a; Liu and Xu, 2016), the mechanism of poverty (Jalan and Rarallion, 2002; Fan and Chan-Kang, 2008; Glauben et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2016), antipoverty strategies (Rozelle et al., 1998; Park et al., 2002; Ravallion and Chen, 2007a; Ravallion, 2009; Glauben et al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2018a), multidimensional measurements of poverty and the mapping of poverty (Olivia et al., 2011; Qi and Wu, 2014; Yu, 2013; Liu and Xu, 2016; Wang and Chen, 2017), antipoverty effect of economic development (Rozelle et al., 1998; Yao, 2000; Meng et al., 2005; Zhang and Wan, 2006; Montalvo and Ravallion, 2010), and international comparisons (Luong and Unger, 1998; Ravallion, 2009, 2011).
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the country has made great efforts to tackle the problems of poverty, and successfully explored Chinese methods of poverty alleviation and development (Du, 2012; Guo et al., 2018). These endeavours have greatly alleviated poverty in rural China. From 1978 to 2012, the cumulative number of people overcoming poverty in rural China exceeded 700.0 million (UN, 2015a; Liu et al., 2017; NBS, 2017), enabling China to become the first country in the world which successfully achieved the goal of halving the population living in extreme poverty (Guo et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2018a). However, the long-standing urban-rural dualistic structure, together with the natural and social factors that restrict rural development (Liu et al., 2017; Guo et al., 2018), left a total of 43.4 million still living in poverty at the end of 2016 (NBS, 2017). Most of them lived in densely mountainous, highly arid, ecologically vulnerable, disaster-prone and habitat conservation areas, which were mainly old revolutionary bases or places where minorities clustered (Wang and Wang, 2015; Liu et al., 2017). In this context, the islanding effect of the distribution of the impoverished population and marginal diminishing effect of antipoverty resources pose great challenges to poverty alleviation and development in China (Liu et al., 2016; Liu and Cao, 2017), which cannot be effectively solved by existing strategies.
To overcome poverty and achieve the Well-off Society by 2020 as scheduled1, the Chinese government implemented targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) in 2013. As the main strategy for poverty alleviation in China currently and in the near future, TPA changes the targeting of antipoverty from regional and county levels to village and household scales (Wang et al., 2007; Li et al., 2015; Guo et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018), introducing targeted measures that have greatly improve the power of antipoverty resources. However, the way how these measures work and their specific effects are little known. It is necessary to systematically analyse the TPA and explore the mechanisms underlying targeted antipoverty practices. This study investigates the connotations of TPA after reviewing the history of poverty alleviation in rural China and takes the old revolutionary base of Fuping, a poverty-stricken mountain county in Hebei province, as a case to investigate how poverty was alleviated via localization approaches under the framework of TPA. The findings of this study could provide valuable implications for the local planning and implementation of TPA in China, thereby contributing to global poverty alleviation and development.
Section snippets
Poverty alleviation in rural China
When the PRC was founded, the country was in a situation of universal poverty, and the central government adopted relief-type poverty alleviation to meet the needs of the poor (Guo et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018). Subsequently, the practices of poverty alleviation in rural China can be summarized as structural reform-promoted poverty relief, development-oriented poverty relief drive, tackling key problems in poverty relief, as well as consolidation-oriented comprehensive poverty alleviation and
Connotation of targeted poverty alleviation
After nearly 40 years of economic reform and opening-up, development in China enters a period of transition (Long et al., 2010; Long and Liu, 2016; Liu and Li, 2017). The traditional modes of poverty alleviation and development cannot wholly eradicate poverty because of the islanding effect of the distribution of the poor and the marginal diminishing effect of antipoverty resources. Hence, TPA is proposed and the central government formulates a detailed top-level design to promote policy
Data sources
The data used in this study are both national level and county level, that of Fuping in Hebei Province. The former includes information about the impoverished population and socioeconomic development of China, which are derived from the China Statistical Yearbook (2017) and the Yearbook of China's Poverty Alleviation and Development (2015). While the data of Fuping are obtained from the people's government of Fuping County.
Study area
Fuping, a county in Hebei Province, is located in the south of the
Main measures of targeted poverty alleviation in Fuping
Under the guidance of TPA, poverty alleviation in Fuping was combined with county economic development by the government to stimulate the vitality of society and economy. Overall, the targeted measures mainly involved industrial development, resettlement assistance, financial development, education security, health safeguard and land consolidation. As a result of these efforts, the poverty in Fuping has been greatly alleviated, and the goal of poverty elimination will be achieved as scheduled.
Discussion
Since the reform and opening-up, poverty in China has been greatly alleviated due to the development-oriented policies (Yang and Wu, 2016; Liu et al., 2017), and has transformed from absolute to relative, universal to local and persistent to transient (Jalan and Ravallion, 1998; Ravallion and Chen, 2007a). Developed regions get rid of poverty quickly, while remote regions still have a large number of people living in poverty (Liu et al., 2016). In this context, the islanding and marginal
Conclusions
Poverty is an inevitable phenomenon of imbalanced regional development (Fan, 1995). To achieve sustainable development, eradicating poverty in all forms is a formidable task faced by developing countries worldwide. After nearly seventy years of poverty alleviation and development, China is currently at the decisive stage of antipoverty (Wang and Guo, 2015; Liu et al., 2017). In this study, we reviewed the history of poverty alleviation in rural China, discussed the connotation of TPA, and
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2017YFC0504700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41601172, 41871183), the Certificate of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant (Grant No. 2016M591105), and the Global Rural Project-China Rural Revitalization.
References (94)
- et al.
Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement
J. Publ. Econ.
(2011) - et al.
The influences of aging population and economic growth on Chinese rural poverty
J. Rural Stud.
(2016) - et al.
The (evolving) role of agriculture in poverty reduction-An empirical perspective
J. Dev. Econ.
(2011) Infrastructure development and economic growth: an explanation for regional disparities in China?
J. Comp. Econ.
(2001)- et al.
Regional road development, rural and urban poverty: evidence from China
Transport Pol.
(2008) - et al.
Regional inequality in health and its determinants: evidence from China
Health Policy
(2010) - et al.
Persistent poverty in rural China: where, why, and how to escape?
World Dev.
(2012) - et al.
Spatio-temporal patterns of rural poverty in China and targeted poverty alleviation strategies
J. Rural Stud.
(2017) - et al.
A geographic identification of multidimensional poverty in rural China under the framework of sustainable livelihoods analysis
Appl. Geogr.
(2016) - et al.
Regional differentiation characteristics of rural poverty and targeted poverty alleviation strategy in China
Bull. Chin. Acad. Sci.
(2016)
Rural restructuring in China
J. Rural Stud.
Building new countryside in China: a geographical perspective
Land Use Pol.
Differentiation of rural development driven by industrialization and urbanization in eastern coastal China
Habitat Int.
Rural electrification in China: a policy and institutional analysis
Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev.
Evaluating China's poverty alleviation program: a regression discontinuity approach
J. Publ. Econ.
Poverty, inequality, and growth in urban China, 1986-2000
J. Comp. Econ.
The pattern of growth and poverty reduction in China
J. Comp. Econ.
Regional poverty targeting in China
J. Publ. Econ.
Land administration reform in China: its impact on land allocation and economic development
Land Use Pol.
Are there lessons for Africa from China's success against poverty?
World Dev.
China's (uneven) progress against poverty
J. Dev. Econ.
Targeted poverty investments and economic growth in China
World Dev.
Growing inequality and poverty in China. China Econ
Rev.
The identification and assessment of ecological risks for land consolidation based on the anticipation of ecosystem stabilization: a case study in Hubei Province, China
Land Use Pol.
The impact of growth and inequality on rural poverty in China
J. Comp. Econ.
Targeted poverty alleviation and land policy innovation: some practice and policy implications from China
Land Use Pol.
Land consolidation boosting poverty alleviation in China: theory and practice
Land Use Pol
Multidimensional Poverty and its Discontents
Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2014. OPHI Briefing 21
Still social and democratic? Inclusive education policies in the nordic welfare states
Scand. J. Educ. Res.
Income poverty and multidimensional deprivation: lessons from cross-regional analysis
Rev. Income Wealth
Conflict, education and the intergenerational transmission of poverty in Northern Uganda
J. Int. Dev.
Demographic transition, demographic dividend, and Lewis turning point in China
China Econ. J.
Contributing factors and classification of poor villages in China
Acta Geograph. Sin.
The community-based rural welfare system in the people's Republic of China: 1949-1979
Community Dev. J.
Taking the road of poverty alleviation and development with Chinese characteristics
China Venture Capital
The transition of the stages of poverty reduction in rural China
China Rural Survey
Yearbook of China's Poverty Alleviation and Alleviation
Of belts and ladders: state policy and uneven regional development in Post‐Mao China
Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr.
China's rapidly aging population creates policy challenges in shaping a viable long-term care system
Health Aff.
Geographical patterns and anti-poverty targeting post-2020 in China
J. Geogr. Sci.
A synthesis of poverty line definitions
Rev. Income Wealth
Fertility decline in rural China: a comparative analysis
J. Fam. Hist.
On the psychology of poverty
Science
Development Economics: from the Poverty to the Wealth of Nations
Rural non-agricultural development in post-reform China: growth, development patterns, and issues
Pac. Aff.
Embracing China's new normal
Foreign Aff.
Cited by (100)
Poverty alleviation and pollution reduction: Evidence from the poverty hat removal program in China
2024, Structural Change and Economic DynamicsCan low-carbon city pilot policy decrease urban energy poverty?
2024, Energy PolicyMoving towards sustainable development in China's rural counties: Ecological efficiency evaluation based on DEA-Malmquist-Tobit model
2024, Journal of Cleaner ProductionSocially responsible retailer's service provision strategies for poverty and inequity alleviation in the supply chain
2024, Computers and Industrial Engineering