Staying with China's war on poverty

I mostly travel to small towns and the countryside in China for stories.

I post photos from my trips to social media - a necessity of our profession today. I limit the exercise to four or five images because I believe less is more in an already overloaded space. My images often show hills, valleys, farm animals, rural roads, houses and people. At times, the angle is poor or the light insufficient.

A colleague recently suggested that I add poetic descriptions in photo captions for social media to make them appear less bland. Others have expressed their surprise over my enthusiasm to write about this side of China, which lies in contrast to the country's hectic and glitzy big-city life.

I tell them small towns in China are charming, too. I like the way colorful lights line bridges over waterways. Besides, I prefer the sounds of nature to human chatter. In a test of my nerves in March, I placed myself in the company of thousands of scorpions at a farm in a remote corner of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in the country's south.

I got a glimpse of an industrial program that Guangxi has launched to help its poor villagers. And yes, I made it back to Beijing without getting stung.

While I enjoy rural reporting, I suspect it is no longer the sexiest of beats in any major country.

But with China recently announcing that it is looking to eradicate extreme poverty by 2020, media attention on the countryside will likely be revived. More than 40 million people live below the national poverty line, which is measured at an annual individual income of 2,855 yuan ($414).

It is important to stay with this story, not just for China but also other countries, especially in the developing world, because it is happening at a time of global economic slowdown and the threat to globalization. There could be lessons from the Chinese experience as economists such as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen have pointed out in earlier instances.

Until 2020, the central government is expected to target poverty alleviation in the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu, where it is most needed. For the effective allocation of resources, the use of big data is handy and would discourage local officials from fudging figures to meet targets, the well-known Chinese scholar Hu Angang told me.

In their paper, China's Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction (1978-2002), he and fellow economists Hu Linlin and Chang Zhixiao wrote that in 1990, the country's poverty population accounted for 29 percent of the global poverty population, and the number dropped to 19.2 percent in 1999.

The country witnessed a slowdown in poverty reduction between 1985 and 1990, they wrote.

But China caught up again in the past decade, pulling large numbers out of poverty.

From this year onward, the country will aim to lift 10 million people on average out of poverty each year. Generally, economists agree that the focus would be on the delivery of drinking water, cable and internet connections, roads and electricity, and technology to support farm produce in impoverished areas. In remote places, the relocation of people would be a key component.

Contact the writer at satarupa@chinadaily.com.cn