Fight against poverty

A world in awe of China’s rise for having lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty may assume the country has also eradicated poverty. But this remains a core element of the goal of the 13th five-year plan to establish a moderately prosperous society by 2020. In a recent speech in which he spelt out his poverty strategy, President Xi Jinping left little doubt he sees this as part of his political legacy. Far from eradicating poverty, decades of reform have actually widened the wealth gap between the rural poor and the rest. As a result, the rump of rural destitution is one of the biggest challenges facing the Communist Party.

When Xi launched a poverty alleviation drive in 2015, official statistics still put more than 70 million rural residents below the poverty line, defined as an annual income of 2,300 yuan. Most remain there. Raising them above it in three years is likely to be the hardest task of poverty alleviation. They tend to be stranded in remote rural areas and confronted with difficulties they cannot overcome without extra help.

Pockets of them are to be found in the rural hinterland of booming Guangdong. This calls for extraordinary measures that go beyond increased infrastructure investment in impoverished areas, and do not depend entirely on local officials, who have often been criticised in the past for waste and misuse of poverty alleviation funds.