Beijing, April 1, 2022: Over the past 40 years, China has lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty, accounting for nearly 75 percent of global poverty reduction during the same period, according to the World Bank's absolute global poverty standard of $1.90 per person per day. According to China's current poverty standard, the number of people living in poverty has been reduced by 770 million.
To provide a comprehensive overview of China's poverty reduction achievements, the Ministry of Finance, the Development Research Center of The State Council and the World Bank jointly launched a joint study titled "Forty Years of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Lessons Learned and Future Policy Directions". The China International Development Knowledge Center is the Chinese implementation unit. The study analyzed the main drivers of poverty reduction in China over the past 40 years, summarized the lessons China's poverty reduction experience can draw from other developing countries, and put forward suggestions for China's future policy directions.
Ma Jiantang, Party secretary of the Development Research Center of The State Council, said, "China has implemented a targeted poverty alleviation strategy and launched a battle against poverty that has benefited more people than any other country in human history. To further consolidate and expand the achievements of poverty alleviation, China will pay more attention to improving the endogenous development capacity of poverty-stricken areas, introduce strong measures to support rural revitalization, better promote industrial revitalization, talent revitalization, cultural revitalization, ecological revitalization and organizational revitalization, and gradually achieve common prosperity through high-quality development."
Yu Weiping, Vice Minister of Finance, said, "By the end of 2020, China has fulfilled the task of eradicating absolute poverty as scheduled and made a major contribution to global poverty reduction. After winning the battle against poverty, China will continue to consolidate and expand its achievements in poverty alleviation and promote rural revitalization in all respects. The Ministry of Finance will plan and implement various tasks, policies and measures of financial support for rural revitalization, and will continue to strengthen cooperation with the World Bank in this area."
Manuela Philo, Vice President of the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region, said: "China's poverty reduction story is also a story of sustained growth through economic transformation. "As China's economy transitions to a new model of low-carbon growth, its social policies will need to be adapted to better support labor mobility, continuously upgrade workers' skills to meet labor market needs, and provide better social protection to make the transition equitable."
According to the report, China will rely on two main pillars to address poverty: a broad-based economic transition that will provide new economic opportunities for the poor and continuously raise average incomes; Second, the government implemented targeted poverty alleviation policies to eliminate chronic poverty. These policies were initially aimed at poor areas affected by geographical environment and lack of opportunities, and later shifted to targeted poverty alleviation for the poor population. The report points out some lessons that other countries can learn from China, including focusing on education, promoting outward-looking development, maintaining public investment in infrastructure and implementing pro-competitive structural policies.
The report also stressed that China's economic development and poverty reduction achievements are due to effective governance, cooperation among various government departments and full use of the initiative of all sectors of society. To illustrate the role of broad-based economic transition in poverty reduction, the report analyzes four key aspects: rising agricultural productivity, gradual industrialization, orderly urbanization and rural-urban migration, and the role of infrastructure. The report also reviews China's journey from implementing regionally targeted poverty alleviation strategies, to promoting a social protection policy system that covers both urban and rural areas, and to implementing a targeted poverty alleviation strategy since 2012.
The report argues that China's growth model is likely to undergo structural shifts in the future, including rebalancing the economy away from consumption and high-value services and towards a carbon-neutral development path, and discusses the implications of these shifts for China's future policies. The report stressed the need to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas in quality education services, provide better social protection for migrant workers and further integrate various existing social security policies.
The research lasted for more than two years. The joint research team carried out field research in Ningxia, Zhejiang and other places, invited domestic and foreign experts to hold several seminars, and closely cooperated with research institutions on data analysis. The research team has released part of the case study and data analysis articles in the early stage. The research report provides a comprehensive summary of these works.
The report was jointly released in Beijing on March 31, 2022, attended by Ma Jiantang, Party Secretary of the Development Research Center of The State Council, Yu Weiping, Vice Minister of Finance, and Manuela Philo, Vice President of the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region.
