How China can help its rural poor

Additionally, the illiteracy rate in China was 31.9 percent in 1981, based on the 1982 Population Census. It dropped to 4.08 percent by 2010 (according to the 2010 Population Census). Over the same period, the infant mortality rate - defined as the number of infant deaths per thousand births - declined from 36.6 to 13.1.

Zhang added that another area where China has made impressive progress concerns the increase in its per capita income.

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Per capita income in China in 1980 reached $190, about 1/54 of the per capita income in the US ($10,300). In 2013, per capita GDP in China and the US were $6,629 and $51,248, respectively, and the gap has shrunk to 7.7:1.

In India, on the other hand, 35 percent of adults do not have basic reading and writing skills, its infant mortality rate is 44.6 per thousand births and per capita income stands at $1,504.

Though there are many reasons why China has been able to improve the lives of so many people so fast, Zhang credits the rural reform (the so-called 'household responsibility system') for triggering rapid economic growth. And he also said that the rural household responsibility system adopted in the early 1980s granted farmers land cultivation rights and empowered them to make their own production decisions.

"Due to better-aligned incentives, agricultural production and rural incomes witnessed a dramatic increase in the ensuing years. Consequently, the rural poverty rate dropped sharply from 76 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 1986. In other words, more than 400 million people moved out of poverty in a short, six-year spell," Zhang said.

He also said that the opening up and reform of the economy ensured a three-decade long continuous growth, which allowed hundreds of millions of people from the rural areas to seek job opportunities in the big cities.

And, since 2004, China has passed the so-called "Lewis turning point" (real wages start to increase more rapidly) thanks to the increasing opportunities in the non-farm sector, which benefit the poor who mainly rely on labor income.

Lastly, Zhang said the abolishment of agricultural taxation was another favorable policy for rural residents.