Great contribution to global poverty reduction: China Daily editorial

China's achievement in eradicating absolute poverty can never be overestimated either in terms of its own progress toward its second centenary goal of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects or in terms of its contribution to the poverty reduction goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

More than 868 million residents have been lifted out of abject poverty in the country over the past more than 40 years since 1981, accounting for more than two-thirds of the 1.17 billion people that have been lifted out of poverty all over the world in that period. Notably, the country's targeted efforts to address the remaining impoverished population have helped about 91 million residents shake off intractable poverty from 2012 to 2021.

The further the poverty-alleviation efforts were extended, the more difficult it became to help those who were still living in poverty. Many of whom had lost confidence in their own endeavors to escape poverty and thus hope for a better life, the destitution endured by generation after generation having sapped them of the conviction that they could change their fate.

To address this obdurate poverty, the Communist Party of China Central Committee drew up a plan in which 128,000 villages were identified for targeted poverty-alleviation efforts. More than 800,000 government officials were sent to these places in 2014 to better understand their situations and what could be done to help the villagers finally shake off poverty. Then 255,000 working teams involving 3 million officials went to these villages tasked with helping 89.62 million rural residents increase their incomes.

As the adage says, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life. China's targeted poverty-alleviation approach makes sure that rural residents do not just receive handouts to lift them above the poverty line but have a sustainable means of livelihood that they can further develop on their own.

The targeted poverty-alleviation efforts have been closely associated with development of the poverty-stricken rural areas, which aims to make sure that those who have been lifted out of poverty do not slide back into poverty again.

China has met the poverty reduction target set by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule. This is an admirable achievement. Those countries that have a large number of poverty-stricken residents in particular, can learn practical lessons from how China has accomplished this feat, which many considered to be a mission impossible.

In this sense, it is not so much the scale of what China has achieved in its poverty-alleviation endeavors as the approach by which it has succeeded in achieving its objective that should impress the world. In other words, China's contribution to global poverty reduction is meaningful not just quantitatively but also qualitatively.