China now takes its poverty playbook to the world

Editor's note: Stephen Ndegwa, a special commentator for CGTN, is the executive director of South-South Dialogues, a Nairobi-based communications development think tank. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The Global Partnership for Poverty Alleviation and Development (GPPAD), initiated by China together with 53 countries and nine international organizations, was formally launched on May 27 at the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing. The scope and membership of the partnership reflect a deeper understanding that Beijing has accumulated over three decades of documented work on poverty at home and abroad.

The timing is not incidental. According to the United Nations Development Program, 1.1 billion people across 109 countries currently live in multidimensional poverty, and 887 million of the world's most vulnerable continue to face the compounding burdens of poverty and severe climate hazards. Progress toward the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has slowed across much of the developing world. The GPPAD intends to fill that gap with a specific operating model.

The partnership upholds the principles of mutual respect and mutual learning, respects all countries' independent choices for poverty reduction and development strategies tailored to their national realities. Further, it facilitates the exchange of governance experience in poverty alleviation worldwide and jointly explores fundamental solutions to eradicate poverty. Guided by action and win-win cooperation, the GPPAD encourages members to pursue capacity-building and practical cooperation based on their respective strengths.

It calls for targeted, people-centered approaches to eliminate poverty in all its forms and to prevent a return to poverty. According to Xinhua News Agency, the GPPAD welcomes participation from governments, international organizations, the private sector, academic institutions, and media to jointly foster a fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory and sustainable development environment. That breadth of stakeholder inclusion distinguishes it from narrower bilateral aid frameworks and positions it as a platform for whole-of-society cooperation rather than as an exclusive government-to-government transfer mechanism.

Well-established factual records support China's authority to anchor this partnership. A joint study by China's Ministry of Finance, the Development Research Center of the State Council and the World Bank confirmed that the number of people in China with incomes below the $1.90 international poverty line fell by close to 800 million between 1981 and 2020, with China contributing close to three-quarters of the global reduction in extreme poverty over that period. In 2021, China declared a complete victory in eradicating absolute poverty, achieving the UN's 2030 poverty reduction goal a decade ahead of the deadline.

Maximo Torero Cullen, the Food and Agricultural Organization's chief economist, connected China's domestic methodology directly to its international credibility. He said that China is not only focusing on poverty reduction but also on reducing inequality, with significant progress in rural infrastructure development, innovation in agricultural technologies, and investment in human capital, including access to water, healthcare, and education. He noted that China has built enormous research and development capacity in recent years, addressing not only monetary poverty but the multidimensional nature of poverty, making the progress more sustainable.

That multidimensional approach is precisely what China has been systematically exporting. Through the Global Development Initiative (GDI), China established a South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund totaling $4 billion, implemented over 1,800 cooperation projects, and trained over 200,000 professionals from various fields in poverty eradication and development practice.

In the past five years under the GDI, China implemented 50 practical cooperation projects in areas including poverty reduction, food security and industrialization, along with 1,000 capacity-building programs, and introduced 29 high-quality varieties of rice, corn and vegetables to partner countries, sharing nearly 5,000 new technologies and training more than 20,000 agricultural professionals.

The GPPAD builds on and consolidates this existing architecture. China's international poverty reduction cooperation explicitly reframes developing countries as equal co-creators rather than passive recipients, applying the same demand-driven and targeted principles internationally that it applied in its domestic poverty campaign. The partnership's governance principles formalize that posture at a multilateral level, giving partner governments structural ownership over the strategies they pursue.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Mariano Assanami Sabino, who was present at the forum, said that China has shown strong leadership not only by reducing poverty within China but also by sharing its experience and development opportunities with many countries. He expressed hope that the GPPAD would become a platform for real action that improves people's lives.

The GPPAD is, in institutional terms, a strong reflection of China's determination to assume a larger role in global poverty governance. That effort is grounded in a domestic achievement unmatched in scale, a decade of South-South cooperation at substantial volume, and now the establishment of a formal multilateral platform. Ultimately, the partnership's success will be judged by how effectively it can translate China's development experience into practical outcomes across diverse national contexts.

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