China is best placed to tackle rural poverty globally, and the West isn’t happy about it

Not only is China’s success in reducing poverty without precedent, Beijing is best equipped to help reduce poverty globally – a fact that the Western media seems happy to skip over, preferring instead to criticise Beijing’s actions wherever possible

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Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the lives of impoverished villagers and the work on targeted poverty alleviation in Sanhe Village, in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, in February 2018. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 10:00pm, 10 Apr 2019Updated: 2:59am, 11 Apr 2019

One of the central issues deliberated recently at China’s “two sessions” – the meetings of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference – was rural poverty reduction. Clearly this was a problem issue for Chinese leaders. It is also a concern harboured by national leaders in other countries, in the guise of the rich-poor gap both at home and globally. How to fix this was a question of the day.

China’s two government bodies reached decisions to alleviate rural poverty both at home and in developing countries. The sentiment was that China had done both before.

In fact, China’s accomplishments in these two realms are mind-boggling, having removed some 500 million to 700 million people from the poverty rolls. In fact, poverty in China has been cut to just a fraction of what it once was.

But China has not merely reduced poverty at home. The UN Millennium Development Goals project launched in 2000 was realised, UN officials said, with help from China’s generous, no-nonsense, market-oriented and unfettered foreign aid and investments.

So now, China’s government bodies have made a firm commitment to act again and have drawn up plans.

Liu Yongfu, head of China’s State Council Leading Group Office on Poverty Alleviation and Development, speaks to the media during the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 7. China has set a target of reducing the rural poor population by more than 10 million and taking 300 counties off the country's list of impoverished areas in 2019. Photo: Simon Song