China celebrates ‘victory’ in campaign to end extreme poverty

Communist Party is celebrating the official end of extreme poverty in China with a propaganda campaign that praises President Xi Jinping’s role, part of efforts to cement his image as a history-making leader who is reclaiming his country’s rightful place as a global power.

The propaganda apparatus has been linking national successes to Xi, including fighting the coronavirus, China’s rise as a technology creator and December’s successful lunar mission to bring back moon rocks.

The party announced in November, with little fanfare, that China no longer had anyone in extreme poverty. That was down from an official estimate of almost 99 million living on annual incomes of less than 2,300 yuan ($355) per person a decade ago.

The full-scale propaganda campaign launched this month has filled statecontrolled newspapers and airwaves with reports on the anti-poverty milestone and Xi’s personal role in it.

They credit Xi with launching an initiative shortly after taking power in 2012 that enabled China to beat by a decade the 2030 target set by the World Bank for eliminating extreme poverty. A report by the party newspaper People’s Daily this week on the “historic leap” refers to Xi by his full name and title as party leader 121 times.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping has stood at the strategic height of building a well-off society in an all-around way and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the newspaper said.

The event gives the ruling party a political trophy ahead of this year’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of its 1921 founding. It comes at a time when China’s economy is growing again following the coronavirus while the United States, Europe and other areas are still struggling with outbreaks.

The party said it reached the milestone despite having to take the unprecedented step of shutting down most of China’s economy in early 2020 to fight the coronavirus.

Xi yesterday cited anti-poverty work as a sign of the effectiveness of the ruling party’s system.

“We have finished the arduous task of eradicating absolute poverty and created a miracle that shall go down in history,” Xi said at a ceremony honoring people who worked on the initiative.

Xi presented medals, certificates and plagues to 10 individuals and 10 groups honored as anti-poverty “role models.”

He acknowledged the “material foundation” built up over four decades of market-style reforms that have transformed China into the world’s secondlargest economy and a middle-income society but mentioned no other officials or earlier leaders by name.

The event gives Xi, who has amassed more personal power than any leader since Mao Zedong, communist China’s founder, a new opportunity to assert his historical importance.

Abroad, Xi is pursuing an assertive foreign policy that has increased China’s diplomatic influence but roiled relations with its neighbors and with the United States and Europe.

The poverty milestone gives Xi ammunition to shore up power that some foreign analysts suggested was eroded by the coronavirus outbreak that began in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Anti-poverty campaigns also are aimed at narrowing the politically volatile gulf between an elite who have profited most from economic reform and the poor majority.

Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and then-Premier Wen Jiabao started that process by stepping up spending on rural schools and health care to spread prosperity from the thriving, exportpowered east coast.

China’s official definition of extreme poverty is an income per person of 11 yuan ($1.70) per day. That is lower than the World Bank’s standard of $1.90, but the National Bureau of Statistics says that due to differences in rural living costs, the Chinese standard is slightly higher.

In some areas, low-income ethnic minority communities have been moved out of remote valleys into newly built towns. In others, officials went door to door signing up poor families for job training, grants to start businesses and other aid.

Nearly 10 million people moved into new homes and those of 27 million more have been renovated, according to Xi. He said the government has spent a total of 1.6 trillion yuan ($250 billion).

The average income per person among the “rural underprivileged” rose from 2,982 yuan ($356) in 2015 to 10,740 yuan ($1,665) last year, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Some experts suggest China might be less successful than it claims because Beijing is still using standards for the poorest countries long after graduating to middle-income status. The World Bank’s middle-income poverty standard is an income of $5.50 per person per day.

In a report in January for the Brookings Institution, former World Bank expert Indermit Gill argued China is almost as well off as the United States was in 1960 when it became a high-income country. But Gill said that based on the U.S. income standard from that era, as many as 90% of China’s people would be considered poor.

“If our numbers are correct, China is years — if not decades — behind schedule,” Gill wrote.

TURKEY’S recent monetary policy has reassured investors, German-Turkish Chamber of Industry and Commerce Chairperson Markus Christian Slevogt said yesterday, noting that comprehensive investment incentives, tighter monetary policy and economic reforms will strengthen Turkey’s economy and investor relations as a whole and with Germany, in particular.

Slevogt told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Germany’s investments in Turkey totaled $10.2 billion (TL 73 billion) in the January 2002 and October 2020 period, making it the fifth country according to the amount of the foreign direct investment (FDI) made in Turkey.

He stressed that Turkey has very promising market qualifications for German investments, and “a strategic location in addition to being an advantageous production base with skilled labor and a major market with favorable demographics.” The German official expressed that Turkish pragmatism and flexibility are also among the factors attracting German investors, along with the direct link between the country and Europe and the Customs Union which works as a catalyst for the relations between the country and the bloc.

However, he said, the global trade environment has changed in the last 25 years, thus the Customs Union needs modernizing that would include new developments and agendas, as the agreement creates a win-win situation for both Europe and Turkey.

Further commenting on German business presence in Turkey, Slevogt informed that there are currently 7,556 German companies in the country, including medium-scale firms, that employ around 140,000 people.

He stressed that even in a challenging business environment like the one created by the pandemic that affected FDIs in Turkey, German companies went on as usual because they see the strategic advantage the country offers.

“The trend, according to the 2020 spring, is more positive,” he added.

The automotive and machinery sectors attract the most investment from German firms, according to Slevogt who said some “30% of the chamber members are in the industry and manufacturing sector. There are also significant investments in logistics, pharmaceutical and medical industry, chemistry, renewable energy, retail, finance, textile and similar fields.”

Meanwhile, Slevog emphasized that with his experience in the fields of banking, investment and purchasing companies, he can safely say that Turkey remains below its real value. He added that the potential can be achieved through investment incentives, economic reforms that will strengthen Turkey’s economy with tight monetary policy and investor relations at both international levels and from the German-Turkish perspective.

The recent monetary policy allowing real interest rate has provided a considerable amount of fund inflows as it reaffirmed the confidence of investors and led to the gaining of value of the Turkish lira, he added.