Winning a battle in war on poverty

Centenary goals

A short time after becoming chief of the Communist Party of China in late 2012, Xi Jinping ramped up efforts to achieve "Two 100s" goals, of which the most imminent was to establish a xiaokang shehui. In the following year, Xi was elected president.

To achieve xiaokang, Xi launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate absolute poverty, the threshold required for a society to boost relatively high living standards.

"It is a battle without smoke," said Liu Yongfu, during an annual gathering of officials in December in Beijing. Liu is director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, the top poverty relief agency.

He said that the sweeping battle "has no bystanders", with almost all of society mobilized in a short time to do their share, based on their respective strengths. All of them aimed at marching into the long-awaited xiaokang era－east and west, rural and urban－on schedule, he added.

Nonprofits, research institutes, banks and even multinationals were also active contributors, offering low-interest loans and gene-editing crops that can survive extreme weather and soil conditions. Many of the programs were tailored for regions mired in poverty.

According to Liu's office, State-owned enterprises allotted 6 billion yuan in financial aid to impoverished regions in 2018 alone. Some 88,000 private businesses offered to be paired with more than 100,000 poverty-stricken villages, investing 75 billion yuan and immense effort to help foster local industries.

"The enthusiasm of private businesses for the task has far exceeded our expectations," said Wang Dayang, who oversees nongovernmental involvement in poverty reduction at the poverty alleviation office.

The payoff has proved it was worth the effort, and the progress in poverty reduction has stunned global observers.

China's rural poor, which stood at almost 100 million in 2012, plummeted to 16.6 million by the end of 2018. The incidence of poverty nationwide fell from 10.2 percent to 1.7 percent during the seven-year period, making China a pioneer in reaching the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, which were set by the UN at the turn of the century.

Authorities estimate that another 10 million or more people will shake off poverty this year.