Eradicating Poverty in China

"I insisted on looking at real poverty, understanding the real efforts to reduce poverty, helping those who are in real poverty and achieving real poverty alleviation."

"[The] arduous task of eradicating extreme poverty has been fulfilled."

"According to the current criteria, all 98.99 million poor rural population have been taken out of poverty, and 832 poverty-stricken counties as well as 128,000 villages have been removed from the poverty list."

"The CCP’s leadership and China’s socialist system are the fundamental guarantees against risks, challenges and difficulties."

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Ceremony, Beijing, Great Hall of the People

It took China less than 70 years to emerge from isolation and become one of the world's greatest economic powers.  Getty Images

"When the Communist Party came into control of China it was very, very poor." 

"There were no trading partners, no diplomatic relationships, they were relying on self-sufficiency."                                                                                                                        DBS chief China economist Chris Leung

 

"[The ceremony and propaganda were] aimed at painting Xi Jinping as the victorious commander leading China to success in its millennia-long battle against poverty and allowing him to claim personal credit for this accomplishment."

"This will have dramatic ramifications in terms of Xi's personal power, the extent to which a cult of personality surrounding Xi will be tacitly or directly encouraged."

Professor Carl Minzner, specialist in Chinese law and governance, Fordham Law School

President Xi's address, announcing his country's success in achieving the "human miracle" of wiping out extreme poverty in the most populous country in the world was meant to spotlight pride of achievement linked directly to his presidency. Claiming the milestone was achieved when ten million people in the country for each of his eight years in power broke through the poverty barrier, at a cost of close to $311 billion. Beijing's determination to bring employment to all of its population through the medium of becoming the world's factory.

 

Producing inexpensive, not particularly durable products attractive to a world economy eager to import an impressive range of everyday articles at an irresistible price, reflecting a poorly-compensated workforce, but one that had never before been capable of employing so many people. The process was one of addiction; the West in particular seeing consumers snapping up the cheap bargains, even as a consequence their own production facilities went out of business, unable to compete, completely undercut as China gave the world what it wanted.

 

Beijing was comfortable ignoring copyright, trademark and international norms for competition and business practise. Skilled at theft of other countries' scientific formulae, medical breakthroughs, corporate technology, design and client data helped its economy steadily advance, without the need to invest in research and development of its own. Scrambling up the economic ladder by any means possible, and all were possible for Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party had much to compensate for; its inheritance of the country had come at a steep price.

 

The Great Leap Forward for rapid industrialization of the peasant economy in the 1950s failed to realize its promise and within a decade an estimated ten to forty million people died of malnutrition in an immense famine, thanks to Mao Zedong's vision gone awry. Next up was the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s where China's cultural past was disowned and the culture of Communism instilled at a tremendous cost to the country's social fabric, where just as during the Russian revolution, huge human sacrifice to an ideology that betrayed human nature became a colossal failure.

Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 22. Xi has made fighting poverty one of his main goals since becoming leader of the ruling Communist Party in late 2012. Photographer: Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

What is beyond doubt is that Xi Jinping's vision and belief in his purpose as the guiding light of China is as egotistical and ambitious as his predecessor's. President Xi's personal power readily equals that of Mao Zedong's. But it is without doubt that his personal legacy has been sealed with this historical accomplishment whose stunning vision and proportional success has no rival anywhere in the world. It is no mean feat; setting aside the highly regimented society heavily reliant on state surveillance of the population and rules of behaviour permitting no criticism of its government.

Freedom of any kind in exchange for economic stability. Freedom from starvation. Opportunity for economic advancement. The large and growing Chinese middle class is now able to live in a way that no other generation could even begin to imagine, accruing to itself ownership of property and goods and enjoying services previously unheard of. China's technological advances in every sphere of human endeavour has begun to surpass even that of the mighty United States of America.

Its influence and far reach globally aided substantially by Beijing's use of investment abroad to cant the world toward its advance and benefit. As a member of the UN Security Council, Beijing's human rights abuses cannot be placed under universal condemnation and the CCP sanctioned for egregious conduct. China's new war is one of propaganda, propagated steadily and stealthily while it spreads its influence socially, economically and politically. Its immense hunger for natural resources gathers up the rare and the mundane.

It has the world at its beck and call, the most industrious manufacturer of badly needed supplies of all manner of finished goods and technologies. During a global pandemic which originated in China, the world became dependent on China to provide scarce personal protective equipment to enable its efforts to control the pathogen that has brought world economies to their knees, infected tens of millions of people worldwide, and killed millions more.

The global manufacturing, technological, military colossus produced a viral pandemic that consolidated its influence and power while it solved the endless cycle of endemic poverty at home, even while manipulating its minority populations to become more Chinese, setting aside 'splittism' in favour of 'harmony', and thus achieving happiness as they eschew their traditions, culture, language, religion and liberty in favour of one great big happy family approved by the Chinese Communist Party.