Mar 02, 2021, 16:33
The Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping made poverty eradication a cornerstone of the domestic policies. The well-planned fight against extreme poverty has finally been won. As President Xi was distributing medals to collective units and individuals who played a significant role in helping to eradicate extreme poverty, the outside world was appreciating how the transfer of economic benefits to the common man has transformed China into a low to middle income country.
A recent World Bank estimate showed that over 850 million people in China have escaped extreme poverty in the past four decades. It is certainly a people's miracle for poverty-stricken populations all over the world.
President Xi's fight against extreme poverty has worldwide support. Multilateral agencies including UN, World Bank and leading figures from Bill Gates to Bernie Sanders, have publicly praised China and President Xi for his unrelenting fight to eradicate extreme poverty.
Over the last four decades under market reforms, the country has made great progress collectively and millions are now enjoying a better life all over China. Never before in human history has poverty and destitution came anywhere close to being completely eliminated at a national level.
Under President Xi's leadership, some 10 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty annually. His personal commitment to the cause of the poor is manifested by his actions. In his initial five-year leadership term from 2012, Mr. Xi visited 180 poor regions across 20 provinces in the country. His personable style and empathy with the poor are a big winner among the general public.
On the other hand, his government ran this program at a cost of over $245 billion. And despite the worldwide COVID-19 crisis, the government did not lose sight of this most noble objective. In 2020 alone, the Chinese government spent over $4,000 on each extremely poor person to help them improve their income and life chances.
The design of the poverty alleviation program was developed by identifying over 800 of the poorest counties across the country. This covered around 30 percent of the total area of China. Over a million officials were tasked to study and understand the unique nature of each of these counties. Officials and local leadership of each county had a number of tools at their disposal and freedom to develop localized poverty alleviation solutions.
In some areas, the solution was to modernize local farming practices, help develop personal landholdings, cultivate a different type of crop or focus on increasing per acre yield. In other counties, they worked to provide access to jobs, move populations to a nearby town or a different city. For these people who moved to new places government provided facilities for retraining, accommodation, house ownership, local schools and business grants and loans.
What an independent analyst may observe is that every area had an opportunity to develop and implement a tailor-made solution. This empowered local people and gave them resources to change their lives for the better. This locally developed and owned solution model was far removed from any type of central planning or restriction. It gave them real control and a sense of ownership as they were empowered to better their lives for themselves and their communities.
As a result, millions of citizens are now active stakeholders in the local economy. They and their families are enjoying an improved lifestyle with access to better health, education, jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities. These are the fruits of a cohesive society that is working on a cooperative development model.
Access to higher education has been another key factor in this fight against poverty. Enrollment rates for higher and vocational education have surged. If the current trajectory is maintained, Standard Chartered projects that by 2030, around 27 percent of China's workforce will have a university education. This would put the Chinese workforce composition on the same level as Germany's in 2019 and help to increase the number of people who are earning relatively higher salaries and further decrease income disparity.
In order to continue the fight against poverty and consolidate the gains made since 2012, a new National Rural Revitalization Bureau has been set up. Its aim is to continue the fight against poverty, research and develop new strategies and test them in suitable locations, and then share the knowledge across the country. The department is tasked to further continue the fight against poverty and reduce the income disparity.
Another important role this new department can play is to become the world's center of excellence in poverty reduction. It should help developing countries in their fight against poverty, provide them with theoretical and practical frameworks that have been proven successful in local counties. This center of excellence can initially work closely with the countries which are participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. So alongside helping them develop macro level infrastructure and economic projects, China can help them at a micro level. It can help them alleviate poverty among their citizens and help bring them benefits from the people's miracle.
From mark/ren:
" The US Native American population was 112 million before colonization. Today it is 6.97 million. On the other hand, China's Uighur population rose by 2.55 million or 25% from 2010-2019."
Whenever someone criticizes our Xinjiang policies, just bring on these two sets of numbers.
That's all that we need to do.
Poverty is a scourge on mankind. It insults human dignity and diminishes the potential worth of a human being. It buries hope, multiplies suffering, creates social problems and weakens first the neighbourhood, then the community, finally the state.
Yet, as China has successfully shown and at a remarkable speed and to a scale unimaginable by any other country in human history, it can be eradicated.
For her of such an enormous population coming up from ground zero, her success in eradicating absolute poverty ranks as one of the greatest achievements by any nation.
It is an achievement without parallel not just for her own peoples but also as a signal and emulable standard for other emerging nations including the many which had in their similar pasts been annexed, colonized, sanctioned and abused by western and japanese racial capitalism cloaked as democracy and liberation.
Unlike the governments of the west, in particular those of the anglo five-eyed nations, China's CPC government is constructed by the twin pillars of ideological history and meritocracy.
Ideological history as in the ideology of individual contribution to state wellbeing, and history as the absolute necessity of state wellbeing to strengthen and safeguard the individuals in the light of past experiences. In short, synergistic dual circulation.
Meritocracy as in the education and promotion of officials up the ranks through examinations results and field achievements. The officials must not only be competent but also effective. Which is also why they are constantly reminded of the need for ideological history as a moral compass to guide their deliberations, decisions and actions against the larger canvas of common good within state performance.
The west, on the other hand, is made of individuals trained to game the politics of their democracy system. Basically, get sponsors to pay for publicity in order to gain media mileage and therefore vote support to get elected.
Once past the bar of being elected, they will constantly have to find a workable equilibrium between what they had promised based on what they had megaphoned on the fly, and what they find in reality on the ground which will crimp their actions and results.
It is no wonder so many twist and lie to survive their tenure. How then can this be good domestically for their voters and internationally for themselves inasmuch those they try to deal with?
Those other nations at their receiving ends can therefore be excused for being befuddled by the chameleon nature of their policies for that matter the juvenile behavior they exhibit in making frivolous accusations unbacked by facts on the ground. Could it be because too many of the western politicians have had little experience dealing with real and not faked facts?
Today, all can bear witness to what has happened to the US. Its sea of democracy has parted. One mass wears red ties, another blue ties. The red ties which came up on the platform of poverty has receded into the background. Instead of learning from the mistakes of the red ties, the blue ties now on the rostrum are still repeating them by blaming other nations for their own weaknesses, inadequacies and plain neglect.
Whether they are a red or blue cat, it seems they can never asked themselves if it can catch the black mice that have been gnawing at the fabric of their own society until many have relapsed into poverty.
Their society has high education and sophisticated healthcare but few can afford at risk of drowning in debts. They have arrogated to themselves the sole right to an international financial system which they use to sanction other nations and yet their infrastructure is tattered and that is because they rather spend their money making missiles to kill whoever they dislike, paradoxically under some international rule of law where the only ones making the rule are themselves. They wax about human rights but can't even eradicate poverty of their humans who starve even when their corn belts are full. A pandemic rages in their midst but the only thing their democratic system seems to be focused on is whether it is legal for a leaving leader to pardon his associates, and that after fighting one another over the result of the election, state by state.
Such a US should bootstrap itself up by taking a leaf from the lesson book of countries like China on how to eradicate poverty. Instead of showing goodwill to a nation which has only worked hard to improve herself and her peoples while doing her best for others in similar plight, the same US is now hellbent on exacting presumptive denial on the technologies it produces which she needs - for the time being - to improve lives everywhere and to fight big ticket global challenges like climate change, environmental pollution and pandemics to come which will sunder this planet.
Could it all be because the US has too many d-bones in its political body until it has frightened itself into some miasmic nightmare that if it doubts its own ideology of being champion of global democracy, it will find that what it has been trying to sell to and maintain in its world is not even working out well for its own peoples let alone others?
A little humility should suffice to put the xenophobic western politicians back on track, perhaps even help them gain a morality they never had in the first place except by way of media words before masses and not actual results even within the boundary of their constituencies.
Helping them along should be their own history. The US Native American population was 112 million before colonization. Today it is 6.97 million. On the other hand, China's Uighur population rose by 2.55 million or 25% from 2010-2019. So the western media and political masters should ask who has been conducting ethnic cleansing, genocide even. Understandably, the spirit of Sitting Bull can answer that with convincing evidence.
It remains to say to remediate themselves is simple - those western politicians should have for their breakfast every morning a bowl of salted vegetables. Maybe add some sorghum. No nice-tasting meats allowed. Do it for a year and then maybe some of those d-bones will rightsize themselves. Doing so may even puncture their own selfish egos and help them be more truly concerned about the poor if not for their own then, perhaps if it's not a stretch too much to expect, the poor of the rest of the world.
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