China’s alleged success in poverty alleviation
Absolute poverty is a global problem and its alleviation is set on the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development by the UN. China is said to have reached this goal as early as the end of 2020. President Xi Jinping officially declared in February 2021 that China achieved the eradication of absolute poverty in all its forms, mentioning that it is a “complete victory” that will “go down in history”.
Many newspapers and online portals worldwide reported on the alleged success of China, among them the government-owned news agency Xinhua. The article Data visualization: Getting rid of poverty, China has gone this way, represents with many animated statistical 3-D bar graphs how the number of people who lived in absolute poverty decreased over the years.
Poverty in China is measured by the minimum standard of basic food consumption of 2,100 calories per person per day. 2,100 calories translate into a basket of food, which now contains about 1 pound of grain, 1 pound of vegetables, 1 pound of meat or 1 egg. In 1978, the majority of farmers had mostly coarse grains and little meat and few eggs on their tables, with food expenditures accounting for more than 85% of their total expenditures. By 2008, the food expenditure share dropped to around 60%.
The statistics in the online article visualize the way out of poverty by showing how the variation and the amount of food has changed over the years for people in the rural areas. In 1978, 250 million people lived in absolute poverty with the standard of 100 Yuan per person per year. In 2008, the number decreased to 40 million with a standard of 1196 Yuan. Just two years later the Chinese government established a new poverty line of 2,300 Yuan. Applying the purchasing power parity (PPP) method, the article finds this equivalent to $2.30 per person per day internationally, thus already exceeding the $1.25 poverty standard implemented by the World Bank at the time.
While China celebrates its success, other countries question this achievement and doubt China’s statistics, as well as its self-imposed poverty line going against international standards. It is argued that poverty is dynamic, so can it really be completely abolished?
(posted by Merle Wittgrefe, MA-student)