Guest Commentary by Liu Heguang 

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the country has achieved significant progress in its poverty relief work. In 2013, the strategy of targeted poverty alleviation began to be implemented with the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, and with the concerted effort from all level of governments and social agents. This saw the number of poverty-relieved population go beyond 10 million annually in four consecutive years.  Especially, in 2016, that number was 12.4 million, which means China has successfully completed the phased target of the beginning year in its 13th Five-Year poverty relief plan. 

The main gains of China’s poverty-relief work include the following:  

1. Central state organs such as General Office of the Central Committee, General Office of the State Council, et al., issued more than 100 policy documents or implementation schemes, which are full of countermeasures for solving many “Old-Big-Hard” problems in poverty relief work.

2. By making files & cards and checking again, China has eliminated the incorrect identified poverty population, and re-documented more than 8 million real poverties to improve the accuracy in identification of poverties.

3. China enlarged the financial input into poverty relief from both public finance and finance institutions, among which over 100 billion yuan is from central and provincial governments.

4. China’s impoverishment rate declined from 5.7 percent in 2015 into 4.5 percent in 2016. 

As time goes on, the task remained in poverty relief plan will become more difficult.  Indeed, China will need to resolve the following core difficulties in the coming days:  

1. Fall back into poverty because of illness. China needs to efficiently remove the impact of serious illness on the easy-to-be-poor population.

2. Unsustainable poverty relief effect. China needs to cultivate their own ability to develop local economy of the poor and poverty-struck region.

3. Connection between poverty relief and social security. China needs to improve social security net to protect the right to live and social security rights of poverty  population because of incapacitation.

(Liu Heguang is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development (IAED), CAAS. The article reflects the author's opinion, not necessarily the view of CGTN.)