The Human Side of China’s Poverty Alleviation
▻https://jerry-grey2002.medium.com/the-human-side-of-chinas-poverty-alleviation-71ba469b8df6
Cave homes I saw in 2014 were no longer occupied in 2019
27.5.2921 by Jerry Grey - It shouldn’t be, but it is a controversial subject. The World Bank, WHO, US State Department and pretty much every government in the world has a different definition of what poverty means. In China, absolute poverty is defined as 11RMB a day, this is about $1.70. The World Bank disagrees and sets a higher number. In 2011 the USA considered people to be in poverty if their consumption was less than $21.70 a day. If that were the case, allowing for inflationary adjustment, almost all Chinese people outside of a few well-known cities would be in poverty. But living in China is an entirely different situation. Living in Urban China changes things greatly to living in Rural China too.
China doesn’t claim poverty eradication, it has a poverty alleviation program. The aim of this is to lift every Chinese person into a category they call: “moderately prosperous”. So the idea of putting a monetary value on poverty has no meaning. Instead of a monetary amount, we can consider a statement: Where a person’s resources are insufficient to meet their daily needs, and surely, everyone can agree that this is a good definition, a place where none of us would like to find ourselves. Since different governments, economists, journalists and academics all have different views on how to define poverty, China has taken a slightly unusual step of making a statement to: “Eliminate the “two worries” of hunger and clothing and fulfill the “three guarantees” of health care, housing, and education”. Based on these five categories, no one should need to worry about their basic life needs. In 2015 Xi Jin Ping gave a challenge to his government — go and find every family living in absolute poverty and lift them out of it — they did; and, with one or two minor exceptions which are being dealt with at a local level, have achieved the goal he gave them.
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