Busting poverty — mission accomplished
Effectiveness of precision- driven targeting program wins plaudits around the globe
An A4- sized red card hangs above the front door of Xiao Fumin’s home in a remote village called Bashang in the mountainous area of Jinggangshan in East China’s Jiangxi province.
The city of Jinggangshan is better known as the birthplace of the Chinese revolution. But in Bashang, the red card is a stark reminder that the 67- year- old’s family and many other residents have been mired in extreme poverty for decades.
As China races toward July 2021, when marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Xiao and millions of such poverty- stricken citizens across China are realizing they are now the beneficiaries of an improbable government resolve to eradicate poverty by this year- end, no matter what.
Not even the all- savaging onslaught of COVID- 19 could distract the nation from its goal set four decades back.
Since the launch of the reform and opening- up policy in 1978, some 850 million people have been lifted out of poverty.
The residual unfortunates whose lives are still marred by destitution will likely benefit from precisiondriven targeting of a color- coded poverty- eradication program that won plaudits from the UN and the World Bank.
“Even in 2010, I didn’t expect our lives to turn better, but they have in recent years and how!” Xiao of Bashang said.
The remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of Xiao and his family is a testament to the effectiveness of China’s relentless, long- running poverty- alleviation campaign, and a potential model for other countries that are also striving to achieve similar success, experts said.
A closer look at Xiao’s story would help put such insights into proper perspective.
The red card on the main door of Xiao’s home identifies his family as “a poverty- stricken household”. It also explains the main cause of Xiao’s poverty — his daughter’s illness caused by uremia, a disease that requires a lot of money for treatment.
Those like Xiao, stricken by extreme penury, are identified with a red card, while yellow and blue cards denote successive levels of poverty.
Red cards signify people with no ability to work, like the old, the infirm and those who are past their prime due to illness or disability.
In Bashang, families such as Xiao’s benefited from a special poverty- alleviation program supported by the local government’s fiscal spending. Such families were supported financially to provide food and beverages to tourists who visit the area to spend a day in the way the Red Army had done here in the late 1920s.
This nostalgia- evoking niche tourism contributed a major part of Xiao’s around 13,500 yuan ($ 2,005) income from January to June this year.
Similar incomes have helped his family to stay above the poverty line, up 74 percent from 2010 — for five consecutive years now.
The income statement displayed on a wall in Xiao’s home states that the annual per capita disposable income rose by about 19 percent during the five- year period to 2019.
“The busiest month is always August as it’s part of the summer vacation. But for the COVID- 19 pandemic, the number of tourists I serve could have reached around 800 this year,” said Xiao.
But, due to the impact of the epidemic on China’s economy, Xiao expects to serve fewer tourists this year.
As Xiao’s family income rose over the years, his daughter received better treatment, medical insurance and healthcare services.
Xiao’s improved life situation has much to do with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vision for a povertyfree China.
Xi had set this year- end as the deadline for all rural counties in China to eradicate extreme poverty.
The goal, which is well within China’s grasp now, will enable the country to attain the poverty eradication target 10 years ahead of the schedule set out in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Xi reiterated the target in a speech via video at a high- level meeting in honor of the UN’s 75th anniversary in September.
Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said in July that the number of rural poor people under China’s current poverty line dropped from 98.99 million at the end of 2012 to 5.51 million by the end of 2019.
To achieve the poverty- alleviation goal, central and local governments have taken new measures to collect sufficient funds to ensure spending in key poverty- stricken areas.
“One way is to integrate funding resources from some non- urgent projects and instead inject that money into areas that need it the most, in order to lift people out of poverty and improve their livelihoods,” said Zhao Yang, an official from the agriculture and rural development department of the Ministry of Finance.
The allocation of special government funds to support the povertyalleviation campaign continued to rise from 2016 through this year, with an average annual increase of 20 billion yuan over five consecutive years, with focus on education, medical and healthcare, housing and transportation sectors, Zhao said.
Other measures introduced by the central government were tax and fee cuts to support the antipoverty push, especially since 2018, the guidance for financial institutions to issue poverty- alleviation loans through lower interest rates, and pilot projects of insurance for agricultural products.
Jinggangshan is one of the cities, and Jiangxi one of the provinces, that first implemented the innovative fund- integration measure. The province has been at the forefront of poverty alleviation and became a “lab” of sorts for the country’s poverty- eradication campaign.
Since 2016, the provincial government allocated 39.28 billion yuan toward the campaign, said Wang Bin, head of the provincial finance department.
By May 17, 780 counties in China made progress so that they no longer needed to be labeled “poverty- stricken”. Only 52 counties in seven provinces remain in the “red” zone, according to data from the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.
From 2016 till now, the central and provincial governments have injected 29.04 billion yuan of special funds into poverty- alleviation programs in Jiangxi province, according to the local government’s finance department.
Across the country, the Ministry of Finance had delivered a fullyear quota of 146.1 billion yuan by the end of June, to ensure the poverty- alleviation target is met much earlier than expected, the ministry announced on its website.
“Ensuring sufficient funds for the anti- poverty campaign is always one of the priorities while making the annual fiscal budget. It is especially important for this year,” Wang said.
The central government warned in September that some hitherto poverty- ridden areas that were hard hit by this year’s floods and COVID- 19 should not be allowed to slip back into indigence.
The warning followed data that the regional natural disaster and the global public health crisis had led to a year- on- year contraction of 1.6 percent in China’s first- half GDP growth rate.
A World Bank report forecast that East Asia and the Pacific region would see national economies contract due to COVID- 19, which is expected to increase the number of people living in poverty by 38 million this year, including 33 million who would have otherwise escaped poverty, and another 5 million who would be pushed back into poverty ( using a poverty line of $ 5.50 in income per day).
Poverty “in China is projected to decline” given the government’s strong supportive policies, the World Bank report said.
To prevent an increase in the number of newly impoverished households due to floods or disease, poor people in the affected areas were entitled to receive some payments from the local governments.
These included the minimum livelihood guarantee, said Zou Zheng, head of the finance bureau of Jinggangshan city.
The home of Xiao in Bashang village near Jinggangshan still sports the red card although he no longer belongs to the “poverty group”. The red card helps maintain the records and is useful in tracking households for a national database on the poverty alleviation process. Such data help evaluate the risk of people such as Xiao becoming impoverished again.
The elimination of “extreme poverty” and becoming a “moderately prosperous society” — xiaokang shehui in Chinese — have been set as the twin goals to be achieved in time for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party next July. “Mission accomplished” could well be the theme of 2021, never mind the annus horribilis of 2020.
Ensuring sufficient funds for the antipoverty campaign is always one of the priorities while making the annual fiscal budget. It is especially important for this year.”
Wang Bin, head of the finance department of Jiangxi province