Special Report One·Reform and Opening Up: The Driving Forces of China’s Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development
The Road of Poverty Alleviation and Development with Chinese Characteristics
Wu Guobao
Director, Poverty Research Center, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Researcher, Institute of Rural Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Since the reform and opening up, China has made remarkable achievements in poverty alleviation and development. It has also taken a path of poverty alleviation development with Chinese characteristics and contributed wisdom and experience to the cause of human poverty alleviation.
1 Prominent features of China’s poverty alleviation development
The most prominent feature of China’s poverty alleviation development in the past 40 years of reform and opening up is that national development and progress supports and promotes poverty reduction, and vice versa. Poverty alleviation is integrated into the development process of the country, and the healthy development of the country is promoted and supported through poverty alleviation. The development and progress of the country constitute the most important variable for poverty reduction in China. At the same time, the poverty relief policy and the output of this work also serves and supports the development and progress of the country. This is not only the basic feature of China’s poverty alleviation development, but also an important prerequisite for understanding China’s achievements and experience in poverty reduction. Without this precondition, it will inevitably lead to major deviations and mistakes to analyze and evaluate China’s poverty reduction achievements and experiences from the perspective of poverty alleviation policies and investment, and fail to understand the essence of China’s success in poverty alleviation development.
2 Basic experiences of poverty alleviation development in China
Since the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has made great achievements in poverty reduction, which not only contains specific space-time factors and the impact of China’s unique political system and governance system, but also forms some experiences that can be shared with other countries. The replicable, shared and sustainable part of China’s poverty reduction experience should become an important intellectual wealth for China’s future poverty reduction and the cause of world poverty reduction undertakings.
The basic experience of China’s poverty reduction is to improve the self-development ability of poverty-stricken areas and poor people through launching poverty reduction campaign, to implement targeted poverty alleviation policy, to adhere to poverty alleviation innovation and basic poverty alleviation system featuring the leadership of the party and government, taking the mass as the main body and calling for social participation, and persist in poverty alleviation.
2.1 Promote and support poverty reduction through inclusive development
China has been solving the problem of poverty in the way of development, integrating poverty alleviation into development and solving the problem of poverty in development. This is a major approach China has taken in poverty alleviation, as well as a basic methodology for understanding China’s poverty alleviation path.
Poverty reduction through development in China is mainly embodied in three aspects: poverty reduction through inclusive economic development, poverty reduction through inclusive social undertakings development and poverty reduction through improvement of the ecological environment.
First, implement inclusive economic development so that development opportunities and achievements can benefit the poor. China has chosen an economic development mode suitable for its comparative advantage, giving priority to and focusing on the development of labor-intensive industries with comparative advantages in international competition, steadily developing agriculture with pro-poor effects, actively developing infrastructure construction that can support national economic development and increase employment. In the process of development, China takes the initiative to promote coordinated development between regions and industry’s feedback on agriculture, realizes the sustained and high-speed growth of China’s national economy, and ensures that economic growth benefit the poor and low-income people in a longer period of time. Since the reform and opening up, China’s non-agricultural employment has increased by 448.61 million, an increase of 3.8 times, constituting the most important source of poverty reduction in rural areas. Over the past 40 years, China’s agricultural added value has increased at an average annual rate of 4.3%, which has played a vital role in the steady progress of industrialization and urbanization and poverty reduction in rural areas.
Second, develop inclusive social undertakings and improve the quality and security level of all the people. China has adopted a strategy of inclusive social programs that guarantee basic and broad coverage to seek the development of basic education, medical care and social security, comprehensively improving guarantees on basic education medical care and old-age security of all residents, and extensively elevating the quality and security level of all the people. On the basis of ensuring basic and broad coverage, China has further enhanced the effect of social policies on poverty reduction through targeted education support, health support and social security policies which aim at the poor and other vulnerable groups.
Third, carry out poverty alleviation in combination with the improvement of ecological environment. China’s ecologically fragile areas and rural poor areas are highly overlapped. In the process of ecological environment restoration and improvement, China combines poverty alleviation organically, which not only improves the ecological environment of the country, but also improves the living and development conditions of poverty-stricken areas and related people, providing them with employment opportunities, subsidies and new opportunities to generate income.
2.2 Implement development-oriented poverty alleviation and continuously improve the self-development ability of impoverished areas and impoverished people
Since the large-scale and planned development of poverty alleviation in 1986, China has been implementing the policy of development-oriented poverty alleviation and focusing on enhancing the self-development capacity of impoverished areas and impoverished people. On the one hand, through the implementation of comprehensive preferential policies, the development environment, material infrastructure and public services in poor areas are improved, the competitiveness and development capacity of poor areas enhanced, and the excessive population outflow caused by poverty and the serious imbalance of regional development reduced; on the other hand, through development-oriented poverty alleviation intervention, poor people can be helped to get access to financial services, skill training, industrial development and other opportunities, so as to improve their self-development abilities.
2.3 Implement targeted poverty alleviation and improve the effect of poverty alleviation intervention
Since 1986, the Chinese government has been advocating at the policy level that the limited poverty alleviation resources should be effectively used to help the truly poor areas and poor households improve their working and living conditions, to enhance their self-development ability, and to carry out targeted poverty alleviation, and made unremitting efforts and explorations to this end.
Since 2013, the Chinese government has innovated and established a targeted poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation policy and intervention system, which resolved the problem of targeted poverty alleviation well. Through a series of organizational, institutional and policy innovations, the major practical problems affecting the landing of targeted poverty alleviation policies, such as accurate identification of poverty alleviation targets, governance system for planning, organizing and implementing targeted poverty alleviation, investment and mobilization of poverty alleviation resources, and different types of poverty alleviation methods, have all been solved.
2.4 Adjust the poverty alleviation policies and innovate the ways of poverty alleviation in line with the changing situation and characteristics of it
In the process of poverty alleviation, China has continuously improved and adjusted its poverty alleviation strategy, governance structure, fund management and poverty alleviation methods as well as unceasingly strengthened the effectiveness and the efficiency of the utilization of poverty alleviation resources through experiments, study and innovation according to the characteristics of poverty, the situation of poverty alleviation, the change of national development strategy and government financial support capacity, so as to continuously improve the effectiveness of poverty alleviation and the utilization of poverty alleviation resources.
We will persist in poverty alleviation innovation so that China’s rural poverty alleviation strategies and approaches can adapt to the changing situation and maintain a high efficiency in the long run.
2.5 Implement the basic poverty alleviation system “under the leadership of party and government with people as its main body and the participation of all walks of life,” forming a pattern of poverty alleviation with joint efforts of government, market and society
In the process of poverty alleviation and development, China adheres to the basic principle of “party and government take leadership, people being the main body and all walks of life participating in it,” which gives full play to the role of government, market and social forces, and forms a pattern of mutual promotion and joint efforts of these three parties in poverty alleviation.
First, China upholds the leadership of the party and government in poverty alleviation and development. In addition to enacting laws, establishing regulations and formulating policies to ensure the effective operation of the socialist market economy, the government also plays its due role in the following areas: design and regulate poverty alleviation in the context of national reform and development, ensuring that poverty alleviation plans and policies coincide with and mutually support of national reform and development; establish a leading and coordinating organization system for poverty alleviation and a working system to ensure the effective implementation of the goals of the poverty alleviation plan; mobilize and arrange poverty alleviation resources to ensure necessary investment in poverty alleviation; adjust relevant policies or enact necessary laws and regulations to provide institutional guarantee for the orderly development of poverty alleviation work.
Secondly, poverty-stricken people and grassroots organizations should be the main body to achieve poverty alleviation. The driving force and unremitting efforts to get rid of poverty of poverty-stricken people are the basic forces for the large-scale poverty reduction in China’s rural areas. In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, over 700 million Chinese farmers have been lifted out of poverty through their hard work and unremitting efforts. In the process of poverty alleviation development, grassroots organizations in poverty-stricken areas have continuously explored and improved ways of poverty alleviation in accordance with local conditions and draw lessons from poverty alleviation practices, so as to make new progress in poverty alleviation development in rural areas of China.
Thirdly, actively mobilize social forces to participate in poverty alleviation. Various forms of private enterprises, through creating employment opportunities and paying taxes, have been playing a very important role in poverty reduction in China. Moreover, social forces have also made important contributions to poverty reduction in China in mobilizing resources, organizing and implementing poverty alleviation projects and carrying out poverty alleviation innovations.
2.6 Adhere to poverty alleviation
Since 1986, Chinese government has made unremitting efforts to remain focusing on poverty alleviation development, through seven consecutive five-year national development plans and several poverty alleviation and development plans, thus continuously improving various poverty alleviation goals and methods.
3 Achievements and contributions of China’s poverty alleviation and development
Since the reform and opening up, China has made great achievements in poverty alleviation and development. Great progress has been made in reducing poverty, improving people’s well-being, narrowing the development gap between rural areas and enhancing the development capacity and confidence of the impoverished, which strongly supports the realization of the goal of building a moderately well-off society in an all-round way.
3.1 Reduce the number of impoverished people on a large scale and advance the process of world poverty reduction
According to the poverty alleviation standard of 2,300 yuan per capita net income per farmer in 2010, the poverty-stricken population in rural China has decreased by 739.93 million or 96% in the past 40 years. According to the poverty standard of purchasing power parity （PPP） of $1.9 per day of the World Bank in 2011, the poverty-stricken population in rural China has decreased by 751.32 million or 99% between 1981 and 2015, and the population of China’s poverty reduction accounted for 74% of the global poverty reduction in the same period.
3.2 Significantly improved the quality of peasants’ life and the situation of non-income poverty
Over the past four decades, China has significantly improved the quality and the well-being of the rural population through implementing the overall national development plan, large-scale special help-the-poor program and targeted poverty alleviation. The most prominent progress has been made in the following aspects: significantly improved the material living conditions of transportation, communication, electricity consumption and safe drinking water of rural residents, including those living in poor areas, substantially raised the level of housing security; remarkably strengthened the availability and the service quality of education and medical care; constantly perfected the rural social security system and expanded the coverage of social security network, which obviously helps strengthen farmers’ ability of to cope with vulnerability.
3.3 Effectively curb and narrow the development gap between rural areas in China
The joint role of regional development poverty alleviation, national regional development policies and regional coordinated development planning for more than 30 years has enabled the main areas of economic and social development in poor areas of China to achieve faster progress than the national average, which not only curbed the marginalization trend of the development of these areas, but also narrowed the development gap between poverty-stricken areas and the whole country, and promoted the coordinated development of the whole country.
Poverty alleviation development enhance the economic development ability of poor areas and narrow the gap between poor areas and other regions. China’s poor areas have initially established infrastructure facilities to support local economic and social development, such as transportation, energy, communications, logistics, and so on, and the gap between these poverty-stricken areas and other regions in the level of infrastructure accessibility has been significantly narrowed, while the gap between poor areas in China and other parts of the country in terms of agricultural development has also been significantly narrowed. In poverty-stricken areas, a number of leading backbone industrial enterprises have been established relying on the advantages of local resources, which help to narrow the gap with the national industrial development. From 1999 to 2015, the annual growth rate of the per capita added value of the secondary industry in poverty-stricken areas was 2 percentage points higher than the national average. In 2015, there were more than 38.2 industrial enterprises in each poor county. Of course, the most direct evidence of the narrowing gap between poverty-stricken areas and other areas is that the average income of farmers in poverty-stricken areas and that of national farmers is shrinking. According to the comparable caliber, the per capita income of farmers in poor counties has increased faster than the national average level since 1993, which narrowed the average income gap between poor counties and other areas. During the period of the 8-7 National Plan for Priority Poverty Reduction （from 1994-2001）, the ratio of per capita net income to the national average in poor counties increased by 12 percentage points; 3 percentage points from 2001 to 2010; and 10 percentage points from 2011 to 2017.
3.4 Enhance the confidence and development capacity of the impoverished people
In the process of poverty alleviation development, China has been implementing the policy of development-oriented poverty alleviation, adhering to the combination of poverty alleviation, intelligence improvement and boosting up self-aspiration, and attaching importance to the improvement of the self-development ability and endogenous motivation of the poor. Compared with poverty alleviation mainly through temporary relief and social security, the vast majority of the poor in China have been lifted out of poverty by means of non-agricultural employment opportunities and developing agriculture over the past 40 years, which is relatively stable and sustainable and can help people who have been alleviated from poverty to increase their confidence in the future. In the process of poverty alleviation development, the Chinese government pays more attention to the role of education, training and demonstration, which are conductive to improving the self-development ability and endogenous power of the poor.
3.5 Produce the spillover effects such as training cadres, enriching and developing social governance experience
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China’s poverty alleviation development has been carried out in about one-third of the counties （districts） nationwide, involving countless cadres at all levels, especially the grass-roots level. Since the implementation of targeted poverty alleviation, nearly one million cadres have participated in assisting the poor each year. A large number of cadres work in the front line of poverty alleviation to deal directly with the impoverished households and villages, to understand the causes of poverty and to help design poverty alleviation projects. It enables cadres to have a deeper understanding of the national conditions, develop an earnest working style, and train ability in the working process. These experiences and practice which are valuable assets for cadres, can serve as a propeller to improve the decision-making level and management performance of government departments, especially grass-roots organizations.
In addition, poverty alleviation development, especially targeted poverty alleviation, has also enriched and developed China’s experience in rural governance. China’s large-scale poverty reduction has effectively advanced and accelerated the process of global poverty reduction and created Chinese experience and wisdom in large-scale poverty reduction and targeted poverty reduction. China has proven to the world that developing countries can pull themselves out of poverty and achieve national rejuvenation through our own unremitting efforts.
Translated by Du Bingyu