The Chinese President Xi Jinping finally achieved results to his major five-year-long project of ending absolute poverty across China but doesn’t feel accomplished yet. China had primarily been an agricultural society but in the last 40 years have seen a sudden transformation to being the world’s most rapidly urbanizing country. Their government defines absolute poverty as less than 350$ per year (approx 2,300 yuan), a focal problem in the Chinese countryside. This made Xi focus his strategies of poverty alleviation for the countryside, whose population was fleeing to the cities due to the growing urbanization.
China was now working towards a very important policy goal which the government and their leader had pledged to meet by the end of 2020, well before celebrating 100 years of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in July 2021. Due to the five-year plan coming into effect, Bejing had worked in ending absolute poverty in 832 impoverished counties and was on its way to achieving its goal of ending absolute poverty. On 23rd November, Xinhua a state-run Chinese news agency announced that the last existing impoverished counties had all benefitted from the five-year plan and have thus resulted in no county being in a state of absolute poverty.
However, despite winning a long-term fight against poverty, China has been unable to enjoy the victory of their efforts put due to confusion within the state-run media. Some media houses state the achievements of China whereas some state-run media houses like Global Times share their concerns over the comprehensive review of their data and said it was too soon to study whether China had fully accomplished its goal of poverty alleviation. This was further contradicted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry who’s spokesperson said that China had achieved its goal of poverty alleviation and their hard work had finally borne fruits. There are yet debates going on over census and inspections which would confirm that all standards have been met and the final announcement would be by the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
