China's relentless drive against extreme poverty was boosted further this month with the announcement that the national budget for poverty relief had been increased by nearly 20 percent to 126.1 billion yuan (about 18 billion U.S. dollars) for 2019. 

China has vowed to end abject poverty by 2020, an achievement that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. The Communist Party of China aims to lift 10 million people out of poverty this year to add to the 700 million or so that have been unshackled since the country began opening up to the world four decades ago.

It is a campaign that has been led from the very top with President Xi Jinping spearheading the drive into the homestretch. The focus, as the target date draws near, is heavily on people who live in deep mountains with adverse natural environments and ramshackle infrastructure or have special needs.

Contrast that to the United States, where poverty is largely ignored as a national issue even though 18.5 million people are said to be dirt poor with a total of more than 40 million living below the poverty line – a rather high figure for such a rich country.

Not since Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign have national politicians in the U.S. regularly visited rural, poor areas and focused on poverty in their platforms, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration even said it was considering changes in how poverty is calculated that campaigners say would slash or end benefits for many of America's poor.

"If there's any field in which the Trump administration excels, it's in coming up with more ways to disadvantage the already disadvantaged in American society," wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik after the proposal was floated.  

Last year, the Trump administration was outraged by a report by UN human rights investigator Philip Alston that found poverty in the U.S. has been getting worse under Trump amid cuts in welfare benefits and access to health insurance. 

Fast forward to this month, when another official of the UN publicly praised China's poverty reduction efforts. 

"There are many aspects and many success factors in the Chinese story," Ashwani K. Muthoo, the director of global engagement and multilateral relations at the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, told Xinhua. 

"One of the most important factors, in my opinion, is the political commitment to poverty reduction in rural areas, which is also backed by the allocation of resources. Often, we see (countries outlining) good policies, but then these policies are not backed up by the resources required for transformation to take place."  

Muthoo cited two other factors as well – large infrastructure investment in rural communities and efficient project planning and implementation.

China's anti-poverty budget has, among other things, been used to finance rural infrastructure, for agricultural subsidies and discounted loans and to move rural residents into new government-subsidized homes in urban centers

In the U.S., there is hope that the 2020 presidential campaign will shine a light on the nation's poor, not just on the middle class, with a number of Democratic presidential contenders broaching the subject.

Others at the grassroots are trying with their own movement. In 2018, to mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's Poor People's Campaign, anti-poverty activists launched a campaign to draw attention to the struggles that poor Americans continue to face, especially since the U.S. poverty rate has moved back to around 13 percent.

Even on the Trump-cheerleading Fox news website, the matter has been raised. In a column published on May 19, Douglas Mckinnion, a Republican former presidential White House aide writing under the headline "Death by poverty – how the poorest among us pay the ultimate price," said, "Unless you have actually lived the life, almost no one can imagine the unbearable struggles and hope-destroying reality of that everyday existence for America's poverty-stricken citizens.

"This is not about something for nothing. This is not about bailing out 'freeloaders' or 'welfare cheats.' This is about a class of Americans... who get up every morning, do the right thing, work two or even three low-paying jobs, and still can't deal with crippling rent payments, the cost of food, daycare, or life."

Meanwhile, China says it has lifted 82.39 million rural poor out of poverty over the past six years, with the rural poor population decreasing from 98.99 million in 2012 to 16.6 million in 2018.

"The poverty rate has decreased from 10.2 percent to 1.7 percent (in the same period)," Xia Gengsheng, vice minister of China's State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Reduction and Development, said in a speech in Rome this month.

And to think that in 1978, when the country's opening up began, more than 90 percent of China's population was considered to be living under the extreme poverty line set by the World Bank, which is 1.90 U.S dollars per day today. In 1981, the rate was as high as 84 percent, with about 840 million people living below the line.

The massive reduction is a quite remarkable achievement – a miracle some have deemed it – that the U.S. ought to be envious and try to emulate.