Planning, targeted support help consolidate China's poverty alleviation gains: experts

China has combined long-term planning, targeted assistance and grassroots mobilization to lift nearly 100 million rural residents out of poverty while building mechanisms to consolidate those gains and support sustained development in formerly impoverished areas, experts have noted.

The experts were responding at the Linjia No. 7 Salon in Beijing to a question on how China works to prevent people from slipping back into poverty.

The event was held under the theme "The 105th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China: History, Experience, and Global Contributions".

By the end of 2020, China had lifted the 98.99 million rural residents living below the current poverty line out of poverty and removed all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages from the national poverty list, marking the elimination of regional poverty nationwide.

Zhang Shiyi, former director of the Sixth Research Department of the Institute of Party History and Literature of the CPC Central Committee, said long-term planning and policy continuity were key to consolidating China's poverty alleviation gains.

Zhang said raising living standards and household incomes has long been a priority in China's five-year plans, with specific targets and policies set for each stage of development and adjusted as circumstances change.

After the poverty alleviation campaign, China moved on to advance rural revitalization, he said, adding that developing rural industries and expanding employment opportunities would help those lifted out of poverty secure stable incomes and avoid slipping back into poverty.

Grassroots organizations also played a key role in ensuring policies reached villages and households, Zhang said. Official data show that during the campaign, China dispatched 255,000 village-based work teams and more than 3 million first secretaries and village-based officials.

Wang Yi, deputy director of the Department of CPC History at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee (National Academy of Governance), said preventing a return to poverty had been incorporated into China's targeted poverty alleviation policies.

She said China had shifted from broad, undifferentiated assistance to targeted, household-specific support, with officials visiting individual families, identifying the causes of poverty in each household and tailoring measures — including support for industrial development and education — to their circumstances.

Even after the campaign's targets were met, authorities needed to continue tracking the employment, income and living conditions of people lifted out of poverty, promptly identify risks and adjust assistance policies as circumstances changed, she said.

"No policy can solve a problem once and for all," Wang said, underscoring the need for continued evaluation and policy adjustment.

Zheng Huan, a professor in the Department of Party Building at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee (National Academy of Governance), said countries seeking to understand China's poverty reduction experience should look beyond the scale of its achievements and its national-level goals, and examine how specific policy tools were implemented at the grassroots level.

China tailored its measures to different causes of poverty, including developing local industries, improving education, relocating residents from inhospitable areas, offering ecological compensation and providing social security support, Zheng said.

He added that during subsequent efforts to consolidate those gains, local governments provided vocational education, skills training, employment and entrepreneurship support, and subsidies to help people lifted out of poverty acquire job skills and find work.