Chinese Society Progress and Poverty Elevation

[Suryavanshi]

@xizhimen here u go mate
U can post all the news items here.

 

[xizhimen]

China’s subsidies lifting rural villages out of poverty, but is Xi Jinping’s plan sustainable?

• In 2015, President Xi Jinping set a deadline of 2020 to eradicate poverty in China, with 850 million Chinese taken out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years
• One village in Southeastern Jiangxi province has benefited from government help, but it faces an uncertain future without a sustainable source of revenue

Published: 2:04pm, 3 Nov, 2019


Hidden amid the green hills of the southeastern Jiangxi province, Baoshan village is one of the most remote and poorest corners of China. It is cut off from major traffic routes and its limited arable land is barely able to produce enough food to feed the small group of local residents.

Only a few years ago, the village’s farmhouses were drab and run-down, toilets were holes in the ground, and dirt roads were too muddy to walk on when it rained. The situation, however, began to change dramatically about five years ago when the government’s poverty reduction campaign reached the village.

Farmhouses have been rebuilt or renovated, with all the roofs redone in the same red wine colour, roads have been broadened and paved, and flushing toilets have been installed in every house. Apart from these visible improvements in village hardware, public services were also enhanced, including the introduction of universal health insurance covering up to 90 per cent of a village resident’s medical bills in local hospitals.

“Poor families have received a lot of subsidies in the past two years,” said Liang Lu, who recently returned to the village after working for two years in Guangdong province, China’s most prosperous urban region. “Even ordinary villagers have seen the village become a lot more beautiful. My mother said that she is now embarrassed to spit on the street.”

Even ordinary villagers have seen the village become a lot more beautiful. My mother said that she is now embarrassed to spit on the streetLiang Lu
The village, according to local Communist Party chief Luo Zhaohu, has received around 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in government funding since 2017 for a variety of projects and programmes, with the goal of lifting every village household above the poverty line, which was officially defined in 2011 by the government as a per capita net yearly income of 2,300 yuan (US$326) per person. The poverty line has since been adjusted each year for consumer inflation.

“It’s a huge amount of money for my village,” Luo said in his office under a red banner of a quote from President Xi Jinping stating that “we must win the tough battle of ending poverty”.

The poverty reduction campaign is “strict and comprehensive” and is aimed at ensuring that no one in the village has to worry about “food, clothing, housing, basic education or health care,” Luo added.

China’s achievements in poverty alleviation are unquestionable and recognised worldwide, said Shen Jianguang, chief economist at JD Digits, a unit of Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com. The movement has progressed very quickly because the Chinese leadership has made the eradication of poverty by next year its most important political and economic task, he noted.

In total, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years, according to the World Bank. The country’s poverty rate – defined as the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day – fell from 88 per cent in 1981 to 0.7 per cent in 2015.


Baoshan village highlights the success of the government’s massive poverty eradication campaign, but at the same time the question remains whether the success is sustainable or simply a temporary improvement due to the high level of government funding. The government’s ability to consolidate the effect of poverty alleviation and let the rural economy continue to grow is the main problem for the future, according to Shen.

Luo, the village chief, has already started to worry about when the poverty alleviation subsidies and funds dry up next year once the village is no longer officially designated as being poor and it then must find a replacement sustainable source of revenue.


Like many local governments, Wan’an county runs a budget deficit, with spending greater than revenue. Tax revenue sharing and subsidies from the Jiangxi provincial government and the central government in Beijing keeps the county solvent. However, Jiangxi province also runs a budget deficit, in part due to the personal and business tax cuts mandated over the last two years by Beijing. The slowdown in the Chinese economy this year has also eroded the fiscal position of all levels of Chinese government, which could impact the ability to fully support the anti-poverty programme in future.


A new orange grove on the outskirts of the village will provide a key source of revenue when the trees start to produce fruit in a few years, according to a message board at the entrance of the orchard. Some 40 per cent of the orchard’s crop will belong to the village’s collective account, 30 per cent will be used to pay for the running of the village, while the remaining 30 per cent will be given to the poorest families in the village, according to the message board.

There are few manufacturing or trading activities in the village despite government sweeteners, including a 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) bonus for any business that employs more than 20 local staff. The only manufacturing business in the village is an electronics workshop that employs around 20 workers, while another small factory that makes bean curd milk employs about the same number.

Around 800 villagers, mainly young and middle-aged men and women, have left to work as migrant workers. Villagers in Baoshan earn an average annual income of 6,000 yuan, according to local Communist Party chief Luo, although it is still not enough to pay for a flat in the town centre of Wan’an county, with many households forced to take out large loans to buy property.

Foxconn, most commonly known for assembling iPhones, is known for its high staff turnover, largely because of the low monthly salary of around 2,100 yuan per month (US$297) in Zhengzhou, Henan province. In Dongguan in Guangdong province, a footwear factory worker earns around 4,000 yuan per month, including overtime, while in Guangxi the figure could drop to around 3,000 yuan per month.

While Chinese Communist Party leaders have talked about helping the poor since they took power in 1949, progress on the ground has been slow. During the days of Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1976, some government programmes led to hunger and famine in the countryside. And under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who started China’s economic liberalisation in the late 1970s and 1980s, and his successor, Jiang Zemin, from 1993 to 2003, there was a sharp widening of the gap between urban and rural incomes as the government focused its attention on developing urban zones in the coastal areas.

The direction of government policy began to change under Hu Jintao, who ruled between 2003 to 2013. China abolished agriculture taxes, waived fees for the first nine years of public education in rural areas, and set up a basic social welfare network in the countryside. But poverty remained widespread with Chinese official data showing that 99 million people still lived in absolute poverty at the end of 2012 when Hu left office.

Xi made the eradication of poverty a central tenet of his administration – the first of the three key battles for the government to fight, along with controlling risks and reducing pollution. Xi has repeatedly urged provincial and municipal officials to look after those most in need in their region. One popular story says that when Xi visited a rich province, he interrupted the provincial governor’s bragging about the regional economy and told him “please tell me the situation of the poorest village in your province”.

In 2015, Xi set a deadline of 2020 to totally eradicate poverty in China. It is a key part of his goal of building China into a comprehensive well-off society by 2021, when the Communist Party will celebrate its 100th anniversary.

By the end of 2018, the number of Chinese living in absolute poverty had fallen to 16.6 million, according to Chinese government statistics, out of a population of 1.4 billion.

Luo, the Baoshan village chief, said the pressure to help the poor is so great that local officials have repeatedly visited impoverished households to “help them clean their toilets and clothes” to ensure they feel the improvement in their lives.

To ensure the cleanliness of the village, one of the indicators used to measure the performance of the anti-poverty programme, government officials have employed drones to ensure that villagers are properly trained to put rubbish into the proper bins and not litter, Luo said.

In his office, one wall is almost fully covered with a table listing the names of all 728 villagers as well as a progress table showing how many people have been lifted out of poverty. The number of people living under the poverty line has been reduced to 11, according to Luo.

Direct subsidies have played a significant role in the village with aid for a single household to rebuild or renovate their home having been increased to 38,000 yuan (US$5,400) in 2018 from 28,000 yuan in 2017 and 15,000 yuan in 2016 – and is now around a quarter of the average of 160,000 yuan needed to build a two-floor house.

Villagers who cannot afford to fix their own homes can relocate to a two-room flat provided by the government at no cost. The decoration is basic but it has functioning water, electricity and a cement floor, with a slogan painted on the exterior of the building stating “flats with love and home to poverty alleviation”.

One villager who had accepted the offer, a women in her sixties, said that the flat was much closer to the town centre, cutting significantly the time needed to take her granddaughter to school every day.


https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-...bsidies-lifting-rural-villages-out-poverty-xi

 

[xizhimen]

Saving child's life on top of Pamir mountains Xinjiang

The local hospitals should be upgraded, moving patients down the mountains can be of a big inconvenience espeically if they are having emergencies, besides, facilities are very often not the problem, the problem is no good doctors are willing to go to those poor regions with harsh living conditions, the best way to fix it is to train local doctors and medical workers.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

China’s subsidies lifting rural villages out of poverty, but is Xi Jinping’s plan sustainable?

• In 2015, President Xi Jinping set a deadline of 2020 to eradicate poverty in China, with 850 million Chinese taken out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years
• One village in Southeastern Jiangxi province has benefited from government help, but it faces an uncertain future without a sustainable source of revenue

Published: 2:04pm, 3 Nov, 2019


Hidden amid the green hills of the southeastern Jiangxi province, Baoshan village is one of the most remote and poorest corners of China. It is cut off from major traffic routes and its limited arable land is barely able to produce enough food to feed the small group of local residents.

Only a few years ago, the village’s farmhouses were drab and run-down, toilets were holes in the ground, and dirt roads were too muddy to walk on when it rained. The situation, however, began to change dramatically about five years ago when the government’s poverty reduction campaign reached the village.

Farmhouses have been rebuilt or renovated, with all the roofs redone in the same red wine colour, roads have been broadened and paved, and flushing toilets have been installed in every house. Apart from these visible improvements in village hardware, public services were also enhanced, including the introduction of universal health insurance covering up to 90 per cent of a village resident’s medical bills in local hospitals.

“Poor families have received a lot of subsidies in the past two years,” said Liang Lu, who recently returned to the village after working for two years in Guangdong province, China’s most prosperous urban region. “Even ordinary villagers have seen the village become a lot more beautiful. My mother said that she is now embarrassed to spit on the street.”

Even ordinary villagers have seen the village become a lot more beautiful. My mother said that she is now embarrassed to spit on the streetLiang Lu
The village, according to local Communist Party chief Luo Zhaohu, has received around 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in government funding since 2017 for a variety of projects and programmes, with the goal of lifting every village household above the poverty line, which was officially defined in 2011 by the government as a per capita net yearly income of 2,300 yuan (US$326) per person. The poverty line has since been adjusted each year for consumer inflation.

“It’s a huge amount of money for my village,” Luo said in his office under a red banner of a quote from President Xi Jinping stating that “we must win the tough battle of ending poverty”.

The poverty reduction campaign is “strict and comprehensive” and is aimed at ensuring that no one in the village has to worry about “food, clothing, housing, basic education or health care,” Luo added.

China’s achievements in poverty alleviation are unquestionable and recognised worldwide, said Shen Jianguang, chief economist at JD Digits, a unit of Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com. The movement has progressed very quickly because the Chinese leadership has made the eradication of poverty by next year its most important political and economic task, he noted.

In total, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years, according to the World Bank. The country’s poverty rate – defined as the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day – fell from 88 per cent in 1981 to 0.7 per cent in 2015.


Baoshan village highlights the success of the government’s massive poverty eradication campaign, but at the same time the question remains whether the success is sustainable or simply a temporary improvement due to the high level of government funding. The government’s ability to consolidate the effect of poverty alleviation and let the rural economy continue to grow is the main problem for the future, according to Shen.

Luo, the village chief, has already started to worry about when the poverty alleviation subsidies and funds dry up next year once the village is no longer officially designated as being poor and it then must find a replacement sustainable source of revenue.


Like many local governments, Wan’an county runs a budget deficit, with spending greater than revenue. Tax revenue sharing and subsidies from the Jiangxi provincial government and the central government in Beijing keeps the county solvent. However, Jiangxi province also runs a budget deficit, in part due to the personal and business tax cuts mandated over the last two years by Beijing. The slowdown in the Chinese economy this year has also eroded the fiscal position of all levels of Chinese government, which could impact the ability to fully support the anti-poverty programme in future.


A new orange grove on the outskirts of the village will provide a key source of revenue when the trees start to produce fruit in a few years, according to a message board at the entrance of the orchard. Some 40 per cent of the orchard’s crop will belong to the village’s collective account, 30 per cent will be used to pay for the running of the village, while the remaining 30 per cent will be given to the poorest families in the village, according to the message board.

There are few manufacturing or trading activities in the village despite government sweeteners, including a 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) bonus for any business that employs more than 20 local staff. The only manufacturing business in the village is an electronics workshop that employs around 20 workers, while another small factory that makes bean curd milk employs about the same number.

Around 800 villagers, mainly young and middle-aged men and women, have left to work as migrant workers. Villagers in Baoshan earn an average annual income of 6,000 yuan, according to local Communist Party chief Luo, although it is still not enough to pay for a flat in the town centre of Wan’an county, with many households forced to take out large loans to buy property.

Foxconn, most commonly known for assembling iPhones, is known for its high staff turnover, largely because of the low monthly salary of around 2,100 yuan per month (US$297) in Zhengzhou, Henan province. In Dongguan in Guangdong province, a footwear factory worker earns around 4,000 yuan per month, including overtime, while in Guangxi the figure could drop to around 3,000 yuan per month.

While Chinese Communist Party leaders have talked about helping the poor since they took power in 1949, progress on the ground has been slow. During the days of Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1976, some government programmes led to hunger and famine in the countryside. And under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who started China’s economic liberalisation in the late 1970s and 1980s, and his successor, Jiang Zemin, from 1993 to 2003, there was a sharp widening of the gap between urban and rural incomes as the government focused its attention on developing urban zones in the coastal areas.

The direction of government policy began to change under Hu Jintao, who ruled between 2003 to 2013. China abolished agriculture taxes, waived fees for the first nine years of public education in rural areas, and set up a basic social welfare network in the countryside. But poverty remained widespread with Chinese official data showing that 99 million people still lived in absolute poverty at the end of 2012 when Hu left office.

Xi made the eradication of poverty a central tenet of his administration – the first of the three key battles for the government to fight, along with controlling risks and reducing pollution. Xi has repeatedly urged provincial and municipal officials to look after those most in need in their region. One popular story says that when Xi visited a rich province, he interrupted the provincial governor’s bragging about the regional economy and told him “please tell me the situation of the poorest village in your province”.

In 2015, Xi set a deadline of 2020 to totally eradicate poverty in China. It is a key part of his goal of building China into a comprehensive well-off society by 2021, when the Communist Party will celebrate its 100th anniversary.

By the end of 2018, the number of Chinese living in absolute poverty had fallen to 16.6 million, according to Chinese government statistics, out of a population of 1.4 billion.

Luo, the Baoshan village chief, said the pressure to help the poor is so great that local officials have repeatedly visited impoverished households to “help them clean their toilets and clothes” to ensure they feel the improvement in their lives.

To ensure the cleanliness of the village, one of the indicators used to measure the performance of the anti-poverty programme, government officials have employed drones to ensure that villagers are properly trained to put rubbish into the proper bins and not litter, Luo said.

In his office, one wall is almost fully covered with a table listing the names of all 728 villagers as well as a progress table showing how many people have been lifted out of poverty. The number of people living under the poverty line has been reduced to 11, according to Luo.

Direct subsidies have played a significant role in the village with aid for a single household to rebuild or renovate their home having been increased to 38,000 yuan (US$5,400) in 2018 from 28,000 yuan in 2017 and 15,000 yuan in 2016 – and is now around a quarter of the average of 160,000 yuan needed to build a two-floor house.

Villagers who cannot afford to fix their own homes can relocate to a two-room flat provided by the government at no cost. The decoration is basic but it has functioning water, electricity and a cement floor, with a slogan painted on the exterior of the building stating “flats with love and home to poverty alleviation”.

One villager who had accepted the offer, a women in her sixties, said that the flat was much closer to the town centre, cutting significantly the time needed to take her granddaughter to school every day.


https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-...bsidies-lifting-rural-villages-out-poverty-xi

Many Chinese things looks beautiful on papers but one doesn't know what is true. It may be a part of paid article sponsored by Chinese government out of their Propaganda Budget. If true, this can be an interesting model to be studied as a poverty elimination model.

 

[xizhimen]

School Poverty alleviation in poor desert rural regions in southern Xinjiang, safe drinking water for rural kids

Southern Xinjiang desert region is one of the 14 worst poverty stricken regions in China prioritized for alleviation program by the government. The alleviation officials found the local school kids had a habit of drinking tap water directly from the faucets and they tested the local tap water and found the water is not clean enought for direct drinking and may compromise children's health.

After the report handed to the government, water purifier machines were sent and installed in local schools, now children can drink water safely from those machines and the children say the water from the water purifiers taste much better.

The local teacher says it'll still take some time to change the local kids habit of drinking tap water directly though.

 

[xizhimen]

Many Chinese things looks beautiful on papers but one doesn't know what is true. It may be a part of paid article sponsored by Chinese government out of their Propaganda Budget. If true, this can be an interesting model to be studied as a poverty elimination model.

Actually the article made a very good point, now the government just gives them free money, house, medicare, educaiton.. that may help them up over the poverty line in the year 2020, so the government can claim victory over their 2020 poverty elimination promise, but is this policy sustainable? what about if no more free funds coming in 2021? Then many of them will go back to poverty. The government has to find ways to sustain the improvement, creating local goo job opportunities and developing tourism are good options to start with, farming in those barren lands can not even feed themselves.

 

[xizhimen]

Is that right that the central government gives all the pressure to lower level local government officials for poverty alleviation tasks, in recent years many grassroots lower level government officials were stressed out and quit their government jobs.

Xi Jinping is determined to end all poverty in China by 2020. Can he do it?

• CNN News
• 6:58 pm
• April 19, 2019

In the small village of Gaibao, locals are filming short videos of their unspoiled and idyllic countryside on the Kwai streaming app.

One clip shows four young women laughing as they grab fat fish out of the rice fields with their hands. In another they don traditional outfits and stand next to an ox plowing a paddy field. “Do you all have a farm such as this?” the caption asks.

Their short videos are a small part of a massive nationwide attempt to lift all of China’s 1.4 billion people out of poverty by 2020 — a goal which President Xi Jinping set in a speech in 2015.

The Chinese government defines poverty as earning less than $416 (2,800 yuan) a year or around $1.10 a day — a lower benchmark than the World Bank poverty line of $1.90 a day, or just under $700 a year.

Beijing has dispatched about 775,000 party officials to drive the anti-poverty campaign. Many are going door-to-door to work out what the government can do to help. Those who fail in their missions to alleviate poverty could face career oblivion, according to state media.

The idea to stream videos of the village came from Gaibao’s chief poverty alleviation official, Wu Yusheng, and has helped the town, in the province of Guizhou, sell its organic produce online.

Residents also receive virtual gifts from fans via the app, which they can exchange for cash.

Wu, who arrived in the village in 2018, said he had already achieved his goal — but it is unclear whether Xi will do the same.

At worst, some experts fear the ruling Communist Party might just announce poverty has been eradicated, regardless of the reality, to avoid embarrassing Xi.

“Local leaders are taking it extremely seriously, almost in a panicky way. Part of the problem is that they don’t know really what to do, so they’re kind of grasping at different solutions,” said John Donaldson, a poverty expert and associate professor at Singapore Management University. “They’re throwing everything at it.”

The campaign against poverty

The dream of eradicating widespread poverty in China didn’t begin with Xi. It dates back to the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949. “The reason for the existence of the Chinese Communist Party in the beginning is because of injustice and poverty among farmers,” Donaldson said.

Chairman Mao Zedong’s economic experiments, however, actually set the country back, according to Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the University of London.

“In 1949, Shanghai was still a richer city than Hong Kong. In 1949, any coastal province was richer and more developed than Taiwan. In 1979, Hong Kong and Taiwan were way, way ahead,” Tsang said.

Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, beginning in 1958, was ostensibly an attempt to transform a mainly agrarian society through industrialization and collectivization. Instead, it helped create a famine that cost tens of millions of lives and aggravated poverty across the country.

Things began to change after Mao’s death. In 1978, then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping began liberalizing China’s economy and one of his first reforms was to let struggling farmers sell excess produce to make a profit.

China’s efforts to combat poverty since then have been staggering. In 1990, there were more than 750 million people living in poverty across the nation, according to the World Bank — over60% of the population. Almost 30 years later in 2019, Beijing says that number has dropped to just 16.6 million.

One of the Community Party’s main claims to power in recent years has been that it has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Perhaps for that reason, Xi still isn’t satisfied. Despite the growing wealth of China’s major cities such as Shanghai or Beijing, parts of rural China live without electricity, fresh water and adequate food or clothing.

In his 2015 speech, Xi said he was inspired to make poverty a priority by his experience working in the countryside in the 1960s when his father, a prominent party official, fell from favor during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

“I toiled with the villagers at the time, with the aim to make life a bit better, but it was harder than reaching the sky in that year,” he said.



Roads, internet and jobs


The government’s plan is broadly divided into two strategies — big national policies and small local interventions.

At a national level, the policies revolve around infrastructure spending. Xi’s administration is pouring billions of dollars into the problem, $19 billion in 2019 alone, which has been spent on a variety of projects and initiatives across the country.

More than 200,000 kilometers (124,274 miles) of roads were built or renovated in 2018 and 94% of poor villages were connected to the internet, according to government figures.

Dozens of state-owned enterprises have joined the campaign and poured more than $4 billion (30 billion yuan) into poverty relief programs as of early 2019, according to state media.

Some of these big-ticket projects have sparked controversy. A number of provincial governments have been accused of trying to simply move millions of poor people to newly built urban accommodation to raise them out of poverty.

Some older rural citizens have refused to go, while others have moved but then returned to their old homes. Maggie Lau, a professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, said such schemes aren’t always pragmatic. “If they move to a higher-cost area, how can they afford those new living costs?” she asks.

But to a large degree, the anti-poverty campaign is small-scale and has been left in the hands of local officials.

“Every local official on a township level (one above a village) goes down to every poor household and tries to find out what’s going on and why people are poor and how to apply resources to that,” Donaldson said, describing his observations in Chinese villages.

The solutions proposed vary wildly but often focus on encouraging villagers to lift themselves out of poverty by developing local industries, engaging in e-commerce and boosting rural tourism.

While Donaldson said the effort expended was “amazing,” problems emerged with government officials spending too much time just knocking on doors talking about poverty rather than tackling local problems. “The danger is that it will be a confused mess,” he said.

There has also been a lack of patience with poor villagers who fail to get with the program.

In a report in February, Wu Weihua, a vice chairman of the national legislature, complained that some people just don’t want to “get rich.”

“Some poor people even have the mindset of, ‘You don’t help, I don’t move’,” the report said.



Corruption and pollution


Failure is not tolerated — and the government is watching where its money is being spent.

In March 2018, a provincial governor was kicked out of the Communist Party, partly for his failure to address poverty in his jurisdiction. In October that year, inspections were carried out in provinces across central and western China to check that officials were following orders on poverty alleviation.

The flood of government and company funds allocated to deal with the issue has also revived the ever-present threat of corruption. More than 170,000 individuals were disciplined in 2018 alone for misappropriation of poverty alleviation funds, according to the party’s anti-graft agency Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

There have also been signs that the government’s laser-like focus on poverty is impeding another of its main goals — environmental conservation.

A 2015 research paper found evidence that work by the government to eradicate poverty by boosting the economy was lowering air and water quality in affected regions.

Heavily polluting industries were encouraged to set up shop, bringing jobs and prosperity at the expense of the environment. Or natural resources were exploited for financial gain.

“Economic growth, poverty alleviation and ecological degradation do not appear to have de-coupled as required for long-term sustainable use of the environment, especially with regards to food security and access to clean water,” the joint British and Chinese study said.

Some critics also note that the government has focused mainly on poverty in the countryside rather than in cities, ignoring less severe but still-pressing urban hardship.



‘Absolutely confident’


Wu, the Guizhou village poverty alleviation chief, said he was “absolutely confident” the 2020 goal could be met.

“The government is doing everything to achieve that. And on the micro level, the targeting of poverty population is really precise. It’s not a problem if the entire society is making an effort,” he said.

But experts and international observers say China’s poverty goals achieve the bare minimum — more work will be needed in the cities and the countryside to ensure everyone enjoys a high quality of life.

Qin Gao, director of Columbia University’s China Center for Social Policy, said in a 2018 report that broader government support for healthcare and employment would be more useful than initiatives on an individual basis or e-commerce measures.

“Only a combination of effective development measures and social policies and services can help China eradicate persisting rural poverty in the long run,” she said.

But Donaldson said that even if the target is met in 2020, he didn’t believe the government would just abandon poverty as an issue.

“Any kind of responsible government would be focused on how you help improve the living standards of people who may not be poor but are still struggling,” he said. “I expect that to be on the agenda of the party forever.”


https://ktvq.com/cnn-asia-pacific/2...nd-all-poverty-in-china-by-2020-can-he-do-it/

 

[xizhimen]

Poverty alleviation through medical service in rural Xinjiang

The village officials have to personally delivery the free medicine to those old ladies homes every month, and some have to do the construction work by themselves to install water and electricity facilities to those homes, it's not easy to work as a grassroots level official in China.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

Actually the article made a very good point, now the government just gives them free money, house, medicare, educaiton.. that may help them up over the poverty line in the year 2020, so the government can claim victory over their 2020 poverty elimination promise, but is this policy sustainable? what about if no more free funds coming in 2021? Then many of them will go back to poverty. The government has to find ways to sustain the improvement, creating local goo job opportunities and developing tourism are good options to start with, farming in those barren lands can not even feed themselves.

Actually these external help models are not sustainable. What is sustainable is to build a healthy economic environment. Actually population is also a very big factor in India China Context. We can not eliminate poverty totally till such a big numbers of people are leaving in country.

 

[xizhimen]

Actually these external help models are not sustainable. What is sustainable is to build a healthy economic environment. Actually population is also a very big factor in India China Context. We can not eliminate poverty totally till such a big numbers of people are leaving in country.

China has a lot of manufacturing industries in the east part of China, if China can give more tax breaks and other incentives to encourage a fraction of them to move to the China's wild west, the problem will be solved, although the west part of China is relatively much poorer, but they also don't have many people. It's almost like nothing comparing to the poverty issue China had to face 10 years ago.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

China has a lot of manufacturing industries in the east part of China, if China can give more tax breaks and other incentives to encourage a fraction of them to move to the China's wild west, the problem will be solved, although the west part of China is relatively much poorer, but they also don't have many people. It's almost like nothing comparing to the poverty issue China had to face 10 years ago.

China had the advantage in manufacturing but it is shrinking. Now lot more destinations are emerging so far as manufacturing is concern sch as Bangladesh, Vietnam etc. India is emerging as a hub of high tech manufacturing. So advantage of China is shrinking in manufacturing. China now must explore new ways to maintain competitive age in manufacturing and generate employment. One Advantage / Disadvantage what I see for china is its demography. China has effectively contain the population but the disadvantage on other hand is aging population. With this aging population, I doubt how China will be able to maintain its economy.

 

[xizhimen]

China had the advantage in manufacturing but it is shrinking. Now lot more destinations are emerging so far as manufacturing is concern sch as Bangladesh, Vietnam etc. India is emerging as a hub of high tech manufacturing. So advantage of China is shrinking in manufacturing. China now must explore new ways to maintain competitive age in manufacturing and generate employment. One Advantage / Disadvantage what I see for china is its demography. China has effectively contain the population but the disadvantage on other hand is aging population. With this aging population, I doubt how China will be able to maintain its economy.

Imported workforce, AI, robots.. many approaches can be studied, but China is fast switching into consumption and innovation based economy, labor intensive industries are not the future for China, but I agree China should remove her population contral policy, China has a big population base, with proper policies, Chinese population can recover very fast.

 

[xizhimen]

How China Is Winning The War Against Measles
Leah Rosenbaum Forbes Staff
Dec 27, 2019, 09:00am

Every continent has been fighting the same enemy for decades—the measles virus. While the United States technically maintains its status of having eliminated the disease, 2019 saw more than 1,200 cases, the most in more than 20 years. Other countries have it far worse. Samoa, still in the throes of a months-long outbreak, has had a reported 5,500 cases and 79 deaths so far this year. In the first three months of 2019 measles cases worldwide rose by 300%, with children the primary victims.

China, by contrast, is making significant progress in battling the disease, according to a December report from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. In the past 13 years, with the exception of a brief resurgence from 2013 to 2015, the country has dramatically reduced its number of measles cases via vaccination and disease surveillance.

“China has done well over the last few years,” Robin Nandy, chief of immunization at UNICEF, told Forbes.

According to the report, the past two years have seen historically low levels of measles cases, and the number of outbreaks continue to decrease. Only one measles-associated death was reported in the last 18 months, despite the fact that China is a large and densely populated country.


So how did they do it?

In 2006, the country joined an initiative to eliminate measles throughout the Western Pacific. At the time, there were 7 measles cases per 100,000 people— roughly 88,000 cases a year within China’s population of more than 1.3 billion. Chinese health officials partnered with the World Health Organization, CDC, UNICEF and other organizations to develop a plan to halt the disease from spreading. One key solution was increased vaccination coverage.

“If you ensure high coverage, you are less likely to experience an outbreak due to introduction of virus from some other location,” Nandy says. In other words, vaccination is pretty much the only way to stop an outbreak.

To stop an outbreak of measles from occurring, 93%-95% of the population must be vaccinated against the disease. China offers free measles vaccines to children, and checks the vaccination record of all kids enrolling in school. If a child has not been vaccinated, they are offered catch-up vaccinations immediately, though they aren’t excluded from school if they are not vaccinated. The strong commitment to vaccination on a local level seems to have worked: From 2013-2018, measles vaccine coverage in the country was estimated at 99%.

China is not the only country doing well; other countries including Rwanda and Yemen have found mass immunization campaigns helpful in ending measles outbreaks.

The U.S. also offers accessible measles vaccine and routinely reports measles cases to the CDC, but instead of seeing a decrease in measles cases as in China, more seem to be popping up each year. That’s because the two situations are not comparable, Nandy says. In the United States, where most new parents have never seen a case of measles, people have become complacent. Pockets of children around the country are unvaccinated due to personal or religious beliefs, which has created a newly susceptible population.

In China, even though some parents don’t trust other vaccines, the measles vaccine is seen as an essential medical treatment to prevent children from harm, as well as a social duty to protect other people in the community.

China can learn an important lesson from the U.S., Nandy told Forbes. Despite the country’s recent success against the virus, it could return if they become complacent as well. When it comes to this disease, “we cannot let our guard down,” he says.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahro...winning-the-war-against-measles/#39dfe8724b68

 

[f3243007008]

Many Chinese things looks beautiful on papers but one doesn't know what is true. It may be a part of paid article sponsored by Chinese government out of their Propaganda Budget. If true, this can be an interesting model to be studied as a poverty elimination model.

I was from a small city , and some of my relative is in rural village.

Their living standard is getting better and better, all of them have big TV, air conditioner, washing machine, refrigerator, 60% of them have cars , and health care also good and affordable.

In Oct-1 -2019 , if you don't have TV at home, government will give you a TV for free to watch The 70th anniversary of National Day ceremony.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

I was from a small city , and some of my relative is in rural village.

Their living standard is getting better and better, all of them have big TV, air conditioner, washing machine, refrigerator, 60% of them have cars , and health care also good and affordable.

In Oct-1 -2019 , if you don't have TV at home, government will give you a TV for free to watch The 70th anniversary of National Day ceremony.

When country progresses, its economic benefits automatically percolate down to the people of the nation. If you are a democratic nation , it will happen irrespective of the government in power. If you have a dictatorial regime, it will decide to which extent the benefits should reach to people.
Chinese government might have given TV so that Xi propaganda may reach to the masses.

 

[f3243007008]

When country progresses, its economic benefits automatically percolate down to the people of the nation. If you are a democratic nation , it will happen irrespective of the government in power. If you have a dictatorial regime, it will decide to which extent the benefits should reach to people.
Chinese government might have given TV so that Xi propaganda may reach to the masses.

Yes， But received a new TV without doing anything is happy, isn't it.

As I know , Chinese government doing a lot , you can fell government care about you .

It's not perfect , but to China people , I think its getting better and better

If India government is also very high efficiency and care about its people, its also very good, Asia is improving , Congratulations on your , my friend.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

Yes， But received a new TV without doing anything is happy, isn't it.

Yes , Of course.

As I know , Chinese government doing a lot , you can fell government care about you .

That is great if true.

It's not perfect , but to China people , I think its getting better and better

Actually, in past Chinese people has suffered a lot. So I always wish that they have few centuries full of prosperity and happiness. The only downside with Chinese people is their regime in power which prevents them to enjoy the fruit of economic prosperity.

If India government is also very high efficiency and care about its people, its also very good, Asia is improving , Congratulations on your , my friend.

Unfortunately, India stuck in communist economic model in initial years. When we get out of it, corruption stuck India. It is just now, we have got a right regime in place fully dedicated to uplift the people from poverty. Many right things are happening with India. I hope this will continue for a long time so that India can be achieve its past glory of prosperity, well being, peace and many other good things.

 

[f3243007008]

Yes , Of course.


That is great if true.


Actually, in past Chinese people has suffered a lot. So I always wish that they have few centuries full of prosperity and happiness. The only downside with Chinese people is their regime in power which prevents them to enjoy the fruit of economic prosperity.


Unfortunately, India stuck in communist economic model in initial years. When we get out of it, corruption stuck India. It is just now, we have got a right regime in place fully dedicated to uplift the people from poverty. Many right things are happening with India. I hope this will continue for a long time so that India can be achieve its past glory of prosperity, well being, peace and many other good things.

Every country have its advantage and its advantage.

Wish India good in the future ,and also wish India high speed railway can finished within 10 years.

 

[xizhimen]

The only downside with Chinese people is their regime in power which prevents them to enjoy the fruit of economic prosperity.

I beg to differ, actually Chinese government managing mechanism ensures the country's well planned and well balanced fast development, it also guarantees tangible benefits to speedily reach to the grassroots of the population. The Chinese people do enjoy the fruit of the economic prosperity.

 

[xizhimen]

'Healthy China Strategy' contributes to the world a new way for the health