China has been resolute in its efforts to alleviate poverty and improve the livelihoods of its population. The country's latest five-year plan included aspirations to lift everybody in China out of poverty by 2020.
By the end of 2015, China still had some 56 million people under the poverty line, surviving on less than 2.30 US dollars per day. But that figure has been shrinking by some 10 million every year since 2013, with another 10 million expected to come out of poverty by the end of 2017.
China has already lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty since 1978. While the country's growing economy since that year has been a major factor in this achievement, poverty alleviation measures that the government calls "precise, targeted and differentiated" have also played a part, and they will continue to apply.
