CGTN｜Zhou Shaojie：How did China escape 'poverty trap'

周绍杰清华大学国情研究院

2024-09-17

四十年来，随着改革开放的不断深化，我国在减贫问题上取得了了举世瞩目的成就。中国的国民人均收入不仅成功晋升到世界的中高水平，并且在提高城市化、教育和医疗水平上都取得了显著进步。可以这样说，中国减贫工作的成功，为全球减贫事业提供了宝贵经验，并助力联合国完成2030年可持续发展议程消灭极端贫困的目标。国际专家对中国的减贫成就给与了高度评价。

文丨周绍杰

清华大学公共管理学院党委副书记、长聘副教授，国情研究院副研究员

原文载丨CGTN，2019.3.7

By Zhou Shaojie | CGTN | 07-Mar-2019

The author is associate professor of Tsinghua University and research fellow of the Institute for Contemporary China Studies.

In 1984, when Deng Xiaoping met with foreign guests, he said: “Socialism must eradicate poverty, and poverty is not socialism.” In 1978, China was still a country with a very high poverty rate and the largest poverty population in the world.

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, China has escaped the “poverty trap” and reached the upper-middle-income development stage. According to World Bank's international poverty line, i.e., expenditure standard of 1.9 U.S. dollars per person per day, China's poverty rate was as high as 84 percent in 1981, with approximately 840 million people living below the absolute poverty line.

By 2015, China's poverty rate dropped to 0.7 percent. It is especially worth noting that China's rural poverty rate fell from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent in 2017, based on the 2010 national poverty line standard, evidencing that China has created a unique “poverty reduction miracle” in the history of world development for the past four decades.

Why a poverty reduction miracle?

The direct reasons and most valuable lessons can be summarized in the following three factors.

First, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the country has stuck to a development path that puts economic construction at the center since 1978, and gradually established a socialist market economy system in accordance with its national conditions and development path, and actively created economic opportunities for the people.

During the period of 1978 to 2017, China's per capita disposable income increased by as much as 24 times, which became the main driving force for the large-scale reduction of poverty. Meanwhile, the level of urbanization rose from 17.9 percent in 1978 to 58.5 percent in 2017, and urban population increased by 640 million, which is comparable to a 740-million reduction in the size of the rural poor population.

Secondly, upholding the principle of people-centered development and implementing the people-oriented social development policy have greatly accelerated education and health care.

According to the statistics of the Human Development Index by UNDP, China was still in the low HDI group before 2000 but has became a high HDI country since 2011 with remarkable achievements in education and health. In terms of development in education, the average years of education for the working-age increased from less than five years in 1981 to 10.5 years in 2017.

Apart from the contribution of elementary education, higher education also played an important role. For example, the gross enrollment rate of higher education increased from 3.4 percent in 1990 to 45.7 percent in 2017, exceeding the average of upper-middle-income countries. Concerning development in health, the per capita life expectancy rose from 67.8 years in 1982 to 76.7 years in 2017, an increase of 10 years; and the major health indicators are better than the average level of middle and high-income countries.

The development of education and health has not only beefed up the economic growth with human capital but also become a crucial driving force for poverty reduction.

Third, China continuously implemented a national poverty reduction strategy in different developmental periods.

These strategies gradually formed a comprehensive policy framework of poverty reduction, targeting from poverty-stricken counties to poverty-stricken villages, adopting targeted poverty alleviation towards low-income families, building social security system and expanding public service for poor families, and mobilizing the whole of society to participate in poverty alleviation.

President Xi Jinping put forward the idea of "precise poverty reduction" in 2013, under which the rural poor population was reduced by over 60 million from 2013 to 2017.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke highly of the idea, "Precise poverty reduction is the only way to help the poorest and achieve the ambitious goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development".

Thanks to China's initiative, the UN has drafted rural poverty eradication for more than 700 million people living in extreme poverty globally towards implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

China's poverty reduction miracle reflects the institutional superiority of the socialist path featuring Chinese characteristics, and its rooted reason is the leadership of the CPC. It can be expected that, after realizing poverty eradication in 2020, China will continue to build a society of shared prosperity and share China's experience with the rest of the world.

近期活动 Events

3月8日『国情讲坛』第23讲｜胡鞍钢：决胜第一个百年奋斗目标—— “十三五”规划实施三年评估

3月14日学术沙龙｜刘生龙：外商直接投资与中国地区全要素生产率——基于中国地级市面板数据的再检验

往期精选 Read More

李君如：不忘改革初心，牢记历史使命（下）｜国情讲第十八讲现场实录

李君如：不忘改革初心，牢记历史使命（上）｜国情讲第十八讲现场实录

温铁军：传统农民挽救现代化——1950s&1980s’土地改革的宏观效应（上）｜国情讲坛第十九讲现场实录

温铁军：传统农民挽救现代化——1950s&1980s’土地改革的宏观效应（下）｜国情讲坛第十九讲现场实录

鄢一龙：改革开放与中国五年规划体制转型（上）｜国情讲坛第十六讲现场实录

鄢一龙：改革开放与中国五年规划体制转型（下）｜国情讲坛第十六讲现场实录

【两会】胡鞍钢为清华学子解读政府工作报告

书评｜《抽签与民主、共和》——释放对民主的想象力