The fruits of growth - Extreme poverty is history in China, officials say | China | The... - 1 views
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EARLY IN DECEMBER China announced that it had eradicated extreme poverty within its territory.
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Speaking frankly, it’s a lie,” says Liang Yong, a gruff villager. The official investigation of Ziyun’s economy was, he says, perfunctory.
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Provincial leaders popped into his village, rendered their verdict that it had left poverty behind and then sped off. “It’s a show. In our hearts we all know the truth,”
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Pork is pricey these days, so he eats meat just a couple of times a week. After paying his two children’s school fees, he has little money left.
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But the ability to scrape enough together for meat, education and heating marks Mr Liang as someone who has in fact left extreme poverty
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Sceptics understandably ask whether China fiddled its numbers in order to win what it calls the “battle against poverty”.
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It has regularly raised the official poverty line, which, accounting for living costs, is about $2.30 a day at prices prevailing in 2011.
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Poverty lines in rich countries are much higher: the equivalent line in America is about $72 a day for a four-member household at 2020 prices.)
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In 1978, shortly after Mao’s death, nearly 98% of those in the countryside lived in extreme poverty, by China’s current standards. By 2016 that was down to less than 5%
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It decollectivised agriculture, giving farmers an incentive to produce more. It allowed people to move around the country to find work. It gave more freedom to entrepreneurs. It helped by building roads, investing in education and courting foreign investors. Its goal was to boost the economy;
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The government’s approach changed in 2015 when Xi Jinping, its leader, vowed to eradicate the last vestiges of extreme poverty by the end of 2020.
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tried to encourage personal initiative by rewarding poor people who found ways of bettering their lot
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about 30% of the country’s total—that were designated as poverty-stricken when Mr Xi began his anti-poverty campaign were all mainly rural. Most were mountainous or on inhospitable land
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In the 1980s China broke up communal farms, letting people strike out on their own. Now the government wants them to pool their resources again
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The Luomai shiitake farm is run by China Southern Power Grid, a state-owned firm. But there is a risk that as the anti-poverty campaign fades away, some projects will fizzle.
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The second approach to helping hard-up villages was more radical: moving inhabitants to better-connected areas.
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The government concluded that it was too costly to provide necessary services, from roads to health care, to the most remote villages
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with her new surroundings. There is a good school just across the street, which is far better for her child.
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A bigger challenge is relative deprivation, a problem abundantly evident to anyone who has travelled between the glitzy coastal cities and the drabber towns of the hinterland.
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recent study by Chinese economists concluded that the “subjective poverty line” in rural areas was about 23 yuan per day, nearly twice the amount below which a person would be officially classified as poor.
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namely setting the relative poverty line at half the median income level. It suggests that about a third of rural Chinese still see themselves as poor.
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China does not count any poverty in its cities because welfare safeguards supposedly help those without money.
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But workers who have moved from the countryside lack the right documentation for ready access to urban welfare.
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And for any city-dweller, support is meagre. In relative terms about a fifth of China’s urban residents can be classified as poor,
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To reduce relative poverty, China needs different tactics from the ones used in its campaign against extreme poverty.
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Zhou Weifu, a porter in his 50s, scoffs at the suggestion that poverty is over. “What kind of work is this? I can barely make any money,”