Editor's note: This 100-episode podcast explains how China works. Exploring Xi Jinping Thought and how the Chinese president's approach has shaped the governance of China, the podcast recounts the country's growth story to help you truly understand its success and challenges.

At its 18th National Congress in 2012, the CPC vowed to achieve moderate prosperity in all respects throughout the country. Accordingly, the CPC Central Committee has included development-driven poverty alleviation in the Five-sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy, and made it one of the key tasks for realizing the First Centenary Goal. 

We have produced a raft of major strategies for the fight against poverty on all fronts. This is a fight of unprecedented intensity, scale and influence. But we have made decisive progress, significantly improving the working and living conditions of poor people in impoverished areas, and in so doing we have written a new chapter in the history of the fight against poverty.

We have gained valuable experience in the following aspects from the practice of fighting poverty.

Firstly, we provide a strong organizational guarantee with CPC leadership. Strong leadership is vital to the fight against poverty. We have given play to the role of Party committees at all levels in exercising overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all. In addition, we have put in place a system whereby top leaders of the Party and government at the provincial, city, county, township and village levels take full responsibility for this work. This provides a firm political guarantee for poverty alleviation.

Secondly, the strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is taken to improve effectiveness. Targeted efforts are essential to the fight against poverty. We must take targeted measures to reduce and eradicate poverty, which include: identifying the poor accurately, arranging targeted programs, utilizing capital efficiently, taking household-based measures, dispatching first Party secretaries based on village conditions, and achieving the set goals.

We identify the targets of poverty alleviation, determine who will carry out the work and how they should do it, and make clear how to apply an exit mechanism for those who have emerged from poverty. We do not spray preferential policies indiscriminately or "kill fleas with a hand-grenade". Instead, we adopt targeted measures for different villages, households and individuals according to their specific conditions, so that we can address the root causes of poverty.

(Source: Extract from Xi Jinping's speech at a symposium on poverty alleviation, February 12, 2018.)

This episode is presented by Zheng Junfeng.