Targeted aid averts relapse into poverty

In the transition period over the past five years to consolidate the gains of China's hard-won victory over extreme poverty, President Xi Jinping has called for sustained and targeted assistance to prevent a large-scale relapse into poverty and to integrate long-term support into the rural vitalization initiative.

Xi has repeatedly stressed that while China's focus has shifted toward high-quality development, the importance of rural work should not diminish.

"The priority of rural work is to transition from poverty alleviation to comprehensive rural vitalization," he said during an inspection tour in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in March 2025. "The safety net for those lifted out of poverty must be as solid as a fortress. There must be no large-scale return to poverty," he said.

China declared victory in its nationwide poverty eradication campaign in 2020, after lifting nearly 100 million rural residents out of extreme poverty. A five-year transition period was then established to consolidate the gains and ensure a smooth shift toward rural vitalization. In 2026, the first year after the transition period, the focus has moved toward routine assistance.

Since the transition period began, more than 7 million people have been identified through monitoring systems and provided with targeted support to reduce the risk of falling back into poverty, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The approach builds on "targeted poverty alleviation", a concept first introduced by President Xi in 2013 during a visit to Shibadong village in Central China's Hunan province. The strategy emphasized precision — identifying families accurately, tailoring assistance to individual needs, and tracking results closely.

Li Lu, a researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission's Institute of Social Development, said that targeted assistance is a major innovation in China's poverty reduction strategy. "It focuses on applying measures village by village, household by household, and person by person," she said.

During the transition period, some vulnerable households faced risks of falling back into poverty, due to setbacks in industrial development, unstable employment, and large expenses for education and medical care. In response, local authorities refined assistance measures to include household industrial development, microloans, labor transfer programs between eastern and western regions, and targeted skills training.

"The result has been truly targeted intervention, applying precise solutions to specific problems," Li said.

For example, the family of Xiang Mingyu, an 81-year-old farmer in Jiuguanping village in Hunan, was listed as a monitored household due to the illness of his son, the family's breadwinner. Their risk of slipping back into poverty was eliminated last year, thanks to targeted measures. "The village arranged a public welfare job for my son. He earns 7,800 yuan ($1,135) a year. That really helped us," Xiang said, adding that the family also earns income from planting vine tea, a local specialty.

Village Party secretary Zhang Nanbei said nine households like Xiang's have been under monitoring since the transition period began, and five remain classified as at risk. "Some of them are seniors living alone and are supported through State subsidies of about 630 yuan per month. Their basic living needs are fully covered," he said.

In one family, both laborers suffer from severe illnesses and are raising three children.

The five family members receive minimum living allowances of about 475 yuan per person each month, and their medical insurance covers most hospitalization costs, the village Party secretary added.

Public welfare jobs, such as sanitation workers and forest rangers, are also tailored to those with limited labor capacity. Such positions both strengthen grassroots services and allow vulnerable residents to earn income through work, Zhang said. "The idea is point-to-point assistance. We make sure no one is left out," he added.

Hunan has implemented "door-knocking actions", under which village officials visit households one by one to verify needs. At the same time, the province has launched a monitoring platform that cross-checks data from 14 departments, including healthcare, civil affairs and education. "For example, if a rural household incurs large medical expenses, data cross-checking may indicate a potential risk of falling back into poverty, and the platform will issue an early warning," said Tang Rong, an official with the provincial agriculture and rural affairs department.

In 2025, Hunan newly identified more than 69,000 subjects for monitoring, and over 70 percent of monitored households have since stabilized and eliminated risk.

However, preventing a return to poverty not only involves safety nets, but also depends on creating durable income sources. Last year, Hunan allocated 600 million yuan to build six special industrial clusters, including citrus, vegetables, tea and herbs for traditional Chinese medicine. "The initiative aims to integrate people lifted out of poverty into the industrial value chain, boosting both production and incomes," Tang said.

Before 2018, Jiuguanping village had little industry beyond rice, corn and rapeseed farming. That began to change when agricultural experts helped identify vine tea as a potential pillar industry. In 2019, the village established a cooperative and planted 15.3 hectares. "The first year brought about 60,000 yuan per hectare in revenue. Villagers began to believe in the profitable industry and asked to join," Zhang, the village Party secretary, said. Today, the village has more than 80 hectares of vine tea, making it a leading industry alongside kiwifruit.

The cooperative also offers local farmers purchase prices that are slightly higher than those of outside buyers. Dozens of young people have returned to the village in recent years to open small-scale processing workshops, seeing opportunity in the growing industry, Zhang said.

Nationwide, all 832 counties that were once designated as impoverished have cultivated two to three distinctive leading industries, with their combined total output value exceeding 1.7 trillion yuan, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Wang Sangui, director of the China Poverty Alleviation Research Institute at Renmin University of China, said that as China enters the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), routine and targeted assistance should remain in place to prevent setbacks. He stressed that after the transition period, China is expected to shift from campaign-style poverty alleviation to normalized and institutionalized support. "Common prosperity is a long-term process. It cannot rely on extraordinary measures, but should be built on sustainable mechanisms," he said.

Wang called for unified monitoring systems to identify at-risk households early and provide categorized assistance to prevent a large-scale return to poverty.

"It is necessary to help those lifted out of poverty and low-income groups to increase their incomes and strengthen their development capacity," Wang said, suggesting stronger benefit-sharing that involves farmers more deeply in industrial value chains. "The key is to encourage low-income groups to participate and build their skills and confidence through learning by doing," he added.