Robert Lawrence Kuhn

For the past 15 years, the Communist Party of China has set an overarching goal for China: To become a “moderately prosperous society” by 2020. A primary test of a “moderately prosperous society has been to double China’s 2010 GDP per capita. CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping has certainly reinforced the importance of China’s achieving this goal, but he has augmented it with a critical new criterion. Xi has made it clear that China cannot be a ‘moderately prosperous society’, no matter how high China’s national GDP per capita, if any of its citizens continue to live in extreme poverty. It is common knowledge that General Secretary Xi regards poverty alleviation as his most-important personal mission. But what is not so common knowledge is how poverty alleviation is being implemented, especially at the grassroots, where it counts. Key is the CPC, the Party: mobilizing its organizational power and recruiting CPC cadres at all levels, especially at lower levels, close to China’s poor. In fact, General Secretary Xi has made poverty alleviation a top priority for CPC members. We explore how the CPC organizes and operates poverty alleviation, primarily through the work of Party Secretaries at all levels.

Let no one doubt that, right now in China, poverty alleviation is of the highest national priority. To eliminate all extreme poverty by 2020 is a solemn commitment that General Secretary Xi has made in the name of the whole Party, so that China can claim, with confidence, the actual advent of the long-promised “moderately prosperous society” by 2020. Every Party member is cognizant of Xi’s commitment and, for many local party secretaries, it is their full-time task. I have witnessed Party Secretaries at all levels taking poverty alleviation as their highest personal priority. I can sense that they know that they will be held accountable. At the 19th CPC National Congress in late 2017, General Secretary Xi stressed, with unprecedented authority, that the Party is the highest force of political governance and its comprehensive leadership is crucial to China’s development and its future. And nowhere is CPC leadership more important than in poverty alleviation. Indeed, part of the CPC’s continuing claim to political leadership is founded on the success of its work for the Chinese people, with poverty alleviation perhaps at the very top of the list. That’s Closer To China.