People-centered approach characterizes China's 2025 development

Editor's note: Ding Heng is a current affairs commentator. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

China is placing more emphasis than ever on improving people's living standards as it transitions to high-quality development. This policy direction is evident in the recommendations adopted by the leadership of Communist Party of China (CPC) for the country's next five-year plan, which call for combining investment in physical assets with investment in people. Over the course of 2025, China has made steady progress in the betterment of people's livelihoods.

Addressing poverty is a key part of China's endeavor to drive common prosperity in the country. China lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty over around four decades before it reached the significant milestone of eliminating absolute poverty in 2020. However, there is no complacency in the country because of that triumph. Instead, China has built a robust monitoring system to prevent people from descending into poverty again. 2025 is the final year of a five-year transition period during which China's policy transforms from radical poverty alleviation to long-term poverty prevention.

In 2014, China published a list of 832 counties deemed as impoverished. By 2020, all of them had been removed from the list. As of 2025, these places have on average incubated two to three pillar industries per county. The rural households of these counties saw their disposable income grow 6.5 percent in the first three quarters of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, outpacing the income growth of nationwide rural households in the same period.

Over 99 percent of the population that has been lifted out of poverty now has basic health insurance coverage. In 2020, 83 percent of China's rural areas had access to safe tap water. In 2025, this ratio has hiked to 94 percent.

These improvements take place in a country that has consistently stayed vigilant against reemergence of systemic poverty and has continuously invested resources to help people who have just bid farewell to absolute poverty.

Improving people's livelihoods is more than just taking care of the most vulnerable groups.

During the first 11 months of 2025, China created 12.1 million new urban jobs nationwide, meeting its full-year target of 12 million ahead of schedule. This figure also surpasses the jobs created during last year's same period. This hard-earned performance first and foremost reflects the resilience of China's economy in the face of headwinds and uncertainties. For example, while China's exports to the United States have dropped sharply in 2025 due to Washington's tariffs, shipments of Chinese goods to many other countries have increased remarkably. That has played a key role in stabilizing employment at China's export-focused enterprises.

In the meantime, the steady labor market performance would not be possible without effective government policy support such as tax cuts, subsidies and a targeted campaign to help a record 12.2 million college graduates hunt for jobs.

Healthcare is one of the most important aspects of livelihoods. Since 2019, China has been implementing an action plan known as the Healthy China initiative, an action plan for 2019-2030. In 2025, China broadened the initiative from 15 special sub-campaigns to 18 sub-campaigns, and the initiative has generated new achievements.

In 2020, China's health literacy rate was about 23.2 percent, meaning 23 out of 100 people had basic knowledge and skills in health. By the end of 2024, this rate has surged to around 32 percent, meeting a goal China had set for 2030, years ahead of schedule.

In China's hospital classification system, primary hospitals refer to those at the township and community level, and second-tier and third-tier ones are those with bigger capacities and more resources. As of 2025, dedicated "green channels" have been established in 94.4 percent of public hospitals at or above the second tier for the elderly so that they can easily access the medical services they need.

China's commitment to improving people's living standards is rooted in the CPC's people-centered governance approach. China's top leaders well understand that a scenario where most people don't feel the tangible benefits of development can't be defined as high-quality development. At the same time, China's prioritized goal of boosting domestic demand, adopted partly in response to international economic instability, also requires the country to address people's livelihood concerns. Only when residents see a good prospect for their living standards do they have the confidence to increase consumer spending.

The people-centered mentality underpins not only China's domestic governance, but also its involvement in global governance. In the decade after China's proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, projects under the initiative created over 420,000 jobs and lifted 40 million people out of poverty across BRI partner countries.

The Global Development Initiative (GDI) proposed in 2021 is a further step taken by China in its efforts to improve global living standards. Over the past four years, the GDI has mobilized more than $23 billion to support over 1,800 projects in the Global South. In September 2025, China announced plans to launch another 2,000 "small and beautiful" livelihood projects under the GDI over the next five years.

The BRI and the GDI don't just bring finance and technologies to the less developed part of the world. Perhaps more importantly, they offer an opportunity for some countries to draw their own inspirations after learning about China's approach to improving people's living standards. And the fact that China has been steadily making advancement in this regard, including in 2025, helps inject a dose of optimism that some of the world's development gaps can ultimately be narrowed.

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