In push to eradicate poverty there will be no retreat

The success of China's campaign to lift the living standards of its people, unmatched by any other country, can be chalked up as a human rights triumph, British economist says

Editor's note: As China aims to eliminate extreme poverty and be a "moderately prosperous society" (xiaokang shehui) in time for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China next year, we talk to experts for their take on the country's commitment.

Lifting more than 850 million people out of poverty, as defined by the World Bank, is China's greatest contribution to global human rights, says John Ross.

"No one who is in poverty has real choices in life, no one in poverty is really free," Ross, who is a senior fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, said.

The first and most important of all human rights is to be alive, without which everything else is meaningless, Ross said, adding that the difference between poverty and prosperity is "a life and death question".

"The difference between life expectancy in a low-income economy by World Bank classification and a high-income economy is 17 years.

"Very strikingly this is almost the same difference as between the poorest and the richest parts of cities in economically advanced countries," Ross said.

However, the West, in particular the United States, has necessarily to attempt to conceal this reality, Ross said, "Because it would lead to enormous numbers of people supporting China if these facts were widely understood".

"Instead the US puts forward a totally fake and unreal concept of 'human rights' in which the most important issue is supposed to be questions such as the right to use the US censored channels Facebook and Twitter.

"Give any real person the choice 'Do you want to live 17 years longer or die 17 years earlier and use Facebook?', see what answer you will receive. Ninety-nine percent of people will decide to live 17 years longer and won't care about Facebook in that context."

The world understands just how much China's contribution to reducing human poverty is "a dagger in the heart of the fake US concept of human rights", Ross said.

China is due to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, known as xiaokang in Chinese, this year.

The goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and to have doubled gross domestic product and per capita income since 2010.

More than three decades ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping set out to eradicate poverty when he was Party chief of Ningde city in Fujian province.

Four important principles

In his book Up and Out of Poverty, President Xi stressed four important principles: avoiding a "poverty mentality" (ie, If you believe you are poor, you will be); adopting development measures that are suited to local conditions; the importance of strong leadership and coordination; and not wasting money on grandiose projects just because they might be popular.

Ross said the country is on the brink of decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

A total of 93.48 million rural residents shook off poverty from 2013 to 2019, with 13.35 million rural people being lifted out of poverty each year on average. The poverty head count ratio in rural regions fell from 10.2 percent at the end of 2012 to 0.6 percent at the end of last year.

Also, the average life expectancy of Chinese rose from 74.8 years in 2010 to 77.3 years last year.

Ross said humans have an immense number of needs and desires, ranging from basic ones such as being healthy and having enough to eat, through to the most complex in most advanced fields of human culture or science.

"Objectively, only extremely developed societies, with enormous economic and social resources, can approximately meet all these needs. But if the real meaning of the term human rights is used, it is evident that China has the best record in improving human rights in the world."

There are three aspects to this contention.

"First of all, the people lifted out of internationally defined poverty by China are more than the entire population of the European Union or the continent of Latin America, and more than twice the population of the US.

"Second, China has brought social security protection to millions of people and healthcare to over a billion, and third, China is responsible for 83 percent of the reduction of the number of people living in poverty in the world.