As far as social progress is concerned, I would cite the remarkable achievement made in China’s urbanization over the past four decades. Why? Because China has been traditionally an agricultural country, the majority of its vast population used to live in the poor and underdeveloped countryside.

More than 90 years ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC) made land reform or “land to the tiller” (to allocate land to the peasants) one of its tasks, which mobilized tens of millions of peasants to join the CPC-led revolution. After the People’s Republic of China was founded, agriculture and rural people made a great sacrifice for the country’s reconstruction and industrialization. 

So, when the CPC decided to lead the Chinese people on another Long March [1] to modernization in the 1980s, the top leadership realized that China could not accomplish modernization without either participation from farmers or by modernizing its vast rural countryside. Despite various supportive measures to boost the agricultural sector, low incomes and lack of public facilities and services remained top problems for the rural residents.

([1] The Long March (October 1934-October 1936) was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the CPC to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The best known is the march from Jiangxi Province, which began in October 1934. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrains of western China by traveling west, then north, to Shaanxi.) 

In September 2000, the United Nations adopted the millennium goals, including poverty alleviation. Among other things, urbanization was proposed to achieve that goal. According to UN documentation, urbanization is relevant to a range of disciplines, including geography, sociology, economics, urban planning, and public health. It is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. The UN predicted that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008 and that by 2050 about 64 percent of the developing world and 86 percent of the developed world will be urbanized.

As shown in Table Two, the urban population accounted for 36.2 percent of China’s population in 2000. Although the ratio increased to 44 in 2008, it was still six percent lower than the UN prediction.

In 2015, the 18th CPC National Congress decided to make urbanization a priority for the country’s modernization drive. The purpose of the new initiative is not just to build concrete roads or skyscrapers in urban areas, but also to provide rural residents equal access to public facilities and services enjoyed by residents in cities. It calls for training and job opportunities for the rural people so that they can make a living in a new environment.

Statistics show that people living in cities accounted for only 17 percent of the total population in 1978. Although China achieved the 50:50 ratio two years later than the UN prediction, the figure jumped to 58.5 percent in 2017, which means that more than 640 million people have become urban residents over the past 40 years. The scale is significant as that number is double the US population or five times the population of Japan.

Meanwhile, China has made remarkable progress in its fight against poverty. According to figures released by the government, about 700 million people have been lifted out of poverty over the past four decades. Since 2012, China has stepped up its efforts to alleviate poverty in the rural areas.

As shown in Table Three, there were 98.99 million people living under the poverty line in 2012. That number dropped to 30.46 million in 2017, namely an average of 13.7 million people were lifted out of poverty annually during the five years, taking the lead in the UN-led battle against poverty. The next step is to offer people living under the poverty line training so that they can change their concepts and improve their skills for a better life. The process is called “helping people generate blood within themselves instead of merely transfusing blood into them”. 

The Chinese government has also adopted a new strategy of reviving the countryside. The new approach calls for overall planning on development and environment as well as adopting major policies to encourage investments in rural areas. 

The goal involves three tasks, namely to vitalize agriculture, turning it into a profitable sector so that farmers can make a good living; to upgrade infrastructures in the villages, offering villagers easy access to public facilities and services; to beautify the countryside, developing natural scenes into tourist attractions so that more job opportunities can be created for the local villagers.

(With a doctoral degree in communications from the Communication University of China, the author has been working in the field of international journalism for 30 years. The article reflects the author's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.)