Nation's poverty alleviation inspires world economies

Transferring expertise

Stanis Mbongo Mbantshi, a Food and Agriculture Organization project manager in the DRC's capital, Kinshasa, said Xi has come up with important insights into China's rural development and closing the urban-rural divide.

China's rural vitalization strategy, in particular, will serve as a reference for the DRC in balancing urban and rural development, Mbantshi said.

Alan Piazza, a former World Bank rural development economist, said other countries should note how China became the most successful country at poverty reduction in history.

"Because it's only when we understand how China achieved this poverty eradication that China's lessons can then begin to be transferred to other developing countries that so desperately need help," Piazza said.

"Many Western academics say it was all overall economic growth (that led to China's success in poverty reduction). But it was so much more than that," he said.

Piazza gave the example of China's national poverty registration program — a system that registers all rural households living below the poverty line. The measure, introduced in 2014, has played a key role in poverty reduction, he said.

Piazza said Brazil introduced a similar program inspired by China's experience, even though it was not easy for many other developing countries to establish similar programs.

It is important to put China's experience into context, rather than simply borrowing from it.

"China has extraordinary implementation capacity. When China decides they want to do this, it gets done," he said.

He added that the next step for China should be to share its expertise on poverty reduction in a more effective way.

"China has made sharing its experience on development an important part of its cooperation with developing countries," said Li Xiaoyun, a professor of rural development and poverty reduction at China Agricultural University.

He said that global poverty reduction efforts now face two major challenges.

The first is absolute poverty, a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.

And the second is relative poverty.

"China's targeted poverty reduction policy has provided important experience in this area," Li said.

The key is to eliminate factors that result in poverty, provide affordable healthcare, education and housing and develop industries that provide stable sources of income, he said.

Deng Zhengrui, an agricultural expert who participated in agricultural assistance programs for four African countries, said technical guidance offered by Chinese experts has directly helped farmers boost incomes.

In northern Namibia, Deng said Chinese experts were able to help farmers boost harvests of potatoes and other vegetables, which helped to significantly raise their incomes.

"What we brought with us was our technology, our experience and our ideas. We also worked together, lived together and ate together with our local partners to ensure our experience can be fully absorbed," he added.