Alexandra Ciattini/Li Kaixuan (Trans.): China's Eradication of Absolute Poverty Is a Bright Spot for the World

According to international standards, from 1981 to 2015, the number of people living in poverty in China decreased by 868 million, while the global poverty population decreased by nearly 1.17 billion; China accounts for 74% of the world's population that has escaped poverty. By 2016, the population living below the poverty line in mainland China had decreased by 99.1%. By the end of 2020, China eliminated absolute poverty. China's achievements in poverty alleviation have become one of the most noteworthy and brilliant landscapes of economic and social development in the world today.

For many years, various circles in the West held divergent understandings of the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics; today, however, a rare consensus has emerged in the West regarding the achievements of China’s poverty alleviation struggle ^[1] in the New Era. In October 2021, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres highly praised China's achievements in eliminating poverty and called on the international community to work together to address the various problems facing the current era, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. Guterres thanked China for its role in formulating and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and pointed out that this Asian nation has performed outstandingly in its commitment to lifting humanity out of all forms of poverty, which is of great significance.

This statement is very well-founded, and we can contrast it with the weakening of the rights suffered by Western laborers in recent decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, to combat high inflation and stagnant profit rates, Western capital forces intervened in labor costs, implementing measures such as reducing wages and striking against trade unions; the agreements once reached between labor and capital after World War II were torn up by the capitalist side. This became the turning point for a sharp increase in inequality and poverty in developed capitalist countries. Since then, neoliberalism has held sway, redoubling its efforts to damage the various rights to improved working and living conditions that Western laborers had gained during the thirty years following World War II.

China began implementing reform and opening up at the end of the 1970s. In rural areas, China implemented the "contracting output to the household" ^[2] reform, achieving increased agricultural production and higher farmer incomes. China also explored the socialist market economy, encouraged the development of private enterprises, and introduced advanced foreign technology and investment. The development of China’s township and village enterprises (TVEs) ^[3] was particularly remarkable; these enterprises made important contributions to the rational use of resources and the absorption of surplus rural labor. While the vast number of farmers moved to cities for work and participated in sharing the fruits of economic development brought by reform and opening up, the original collective ownership of rural land was also preserved, leaving them with no worries about the future.

The strategy to promote the development of the countryside, agriculture, and farmers ^[4] was key to China winning the victory in the struggle against poverty. China fully utilized the market economy to promote the opening up of more backward rural areas in the interior, with the "visible hand" reasonably supervising the "invisible hand" to play a positive role. I do not agree with some Western scholars who define China’s way of developing the economy and dealing with poverty as "neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics." In this regard, the words of Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz may better illustrate the essence of the matter: the Chinese government has never confused the ends—the well-being of the people—with the means to achieve those ends. The means mentioned here should be the development of the socialist market economy. In other words, China did not adopt the "shock therapy" promoted by Washington in many countries around the world, but instead formulated and implemented reforms based on its own national conditions, developed the socialist market economy, achieved remarkable results in multiple fields, and improved the lives of over a billion people. These developmental achievements should not be ignored or denied.

Western scholars should delve into the details of China’s poverty alleviation struggle; only then can they lift the "veil of mystery" over China's poverty reduction and subsequently eliminate many misunderstandings. According to the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) formulated by the United Nations—a metric measuring ten dimensions including health, education, and infrastructure services—the connotation of poverty is manifold, involving all aspects of civil and social rights. To promote the realization of these indicators, the United Nations released the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development." Although there are still more than seven years until 2030, given the current complex international economic and political background, the difficulty of achieving this development goal worldwide remains high; yet China has already achieved the poverty reduction goal of this agenda ten years ahead of schedule. China's poverty alleviation policy ensures that the impoverished have sources of income, guaranteed food, clothing, housing, and transportation, and guaranteed basic medical care and free compulsory education. Clearly, China's poverty alleviation is not simply about solving income problems, but about giving the people multiple guarantees for survival and opportunities for development. Because of this, China's method of eliminating extreme poverty is to endow impoverished areas and people with "blood-making" ^[5] capabilities rather than simple "blood transfusions."

In November 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping travelled to Shibadong Village in Hunan Province for an inspection and discussion. In our view, this marked the official launch of the grand undertaking of "targeted poverty alleviation." This undertaking possesses scientifically rigorous and complete procedures: identifying impoverished households, clarifying the persons responsible for advancing poverty alleviation work, and taking appropriate measures to prevent those who have escaped poverty from falling back into it. China created a clear information system and management system for the poverty alleviation struggle to effectively supervise and manage the different stages of this undertaking. Whether it be governments at all levels, grassroots self-governing institutions, or local residents, all can participate in the cause of poverty alleviation in an open and transparent manner. In 2014, 800,000 grassroots cadres in China's impoverished areas entered villages and households to identify 128,000 impoverished villages and 89.62 million impoverished people. Since then, they have continuously used advanced digital technology to verify and correct information on the impoverished population based on actual conditions.

Clearly, the process of China’s poverty alleviation struggle in the New Era is also the process of the Communist Party of China (CPC) advancing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. China's poverty alleviation program was formulated through large-scale mobilization, the pooling of wisdom, and the collective deliberation of the CPC and Chinese governments at all levels, and it has therefore achieved its expected goals. Neither the victory of the poverty alleviation struggle nor the construction of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity can be separated from the role of organization. However, there is no organization without an organizer. The CPC dispatched 255,000 work teams and organized 3 million well-trained cadres to take up residence in impoverished villages, fulfilling its solemn promise to the people. By 2021, the CPC had more than 95.1 million members and approximately 4.9 million grassroots Party organizations. One might ask, what organization is stronger or superior to the CPC?

Today, the goal of China building a moderately prosperous society in all respects ^[6] has been achieved. This is completely different from the consumerist society under the governance of Western elites. In China’s moderately prosperous society in all respects, the people's needs for material and spiritual life will be better satisfied, and the people's aspirations for a more perfect rule of law, more complete democracy, and safer environmental conditions will also receive active responses.

At the 19th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly stated that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a New Era, and the principal contradiction ^[7] in Chinese society has evolved into the contradiction between the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. Clearly, the leadership of the CPC has an exceptionally clear understanding of the problems of imbalance and inadequacy existing in the country’s economic and social development. The CPC will hold its 20th National Congress in October 2022; this is a very important congress in China’s new journey toward the second centenary goal ^[8], and it will scientifically plan for the future development of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

In contrast, in the West, the impoverishment of the masses is intensifying, and the scale of child and elderly poverty is particularly worrying. Currently, 5 million people in Italy have fallen into poverty; in the United States, this number is over 40 million and continues to increase. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the global economic and financial turmoil caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the impact of Western sanctions on the global trade system, the West and other parts of the world shrouded in the shadow of its hegemony will become even more unequal and unjust.