China’s poverty alleviation over the last 40 years: successes and challenges

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, China has made significant progress towards its poverty alleviation goals. The rural population under the current poverty line has decreased by 739.9 million. China has contributed to more than 70 per cent of world poverty reduction. To better promote the new anti‐poverty strategy and to serve as a reference for poverty alleviation in other developing countries, this paper summarises the main experiences of China’s poverty alleviation over the past 40 years and then discusses the challenges associated with implementing the targeted poverty alleviation policy in the new era. China’s experience with poverty alleviation includes development‐oriented poverty alleviation, improving self‐development capabilities of the poor population, encouraging multiple subjects to participate in poverty alleviation and focusing on innovation and ways to improve poverty alleviation. Although China’s poverty alleviation initiatives have achieved significant successes, there are still several challenges that should be of concern in the coming years, such as the diminishing marginal effect of financial inputs on poverty alleviation, the resulting negative incentives for the poor to improve their internal motivations and the insufficient participation of markets and social forces in poverty alleviation. Given these challenges, this paper provides suggestions for anti‐poverty policies beyond 2020.

Internet Use, Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Rural Incomes: Evidence from China

“…2019; Kiiza and Pederson 2012; Liu et al . 2020; Ma et al . 2018b), we consider Internet use through access to broadband Internet services.…”

“…In this study, we contribute to the literature on sustainable agriculture by exploring the association between Internet use, adoption of SAPs and rural incomes from four aspects. First, unlike previous studies that have considered the role of ICTs such as smartphones and computers (Hou et al 2019;Kiiza and Pederson 2012;Liu et al 2020;Ma et al 2018b), we consider Internet use through access to broadband Internet services. This is because that Internet accessibility enables to support more ICTs devices such as smartphones, computers, tablets and TVs, and it allows all household members to enjoy the benefits associated with Internet use at the same time.…”

Effects of the poverty alleviation relocation program on diet quality among low-income households

“…Therefore, this study utilizes a unique policy experiment, the Poverty Alleviation Relocation (PAR) program, to circumvent selection bias and explore the causal impacts of market access and income conditions on the diet quality of low-income households in rural China. Over the past 40 years, China has made significant progress toward poverty reduction (Liu et al , 2019). The PAR program is a massive relocation program as a part of China's poverty-eradication policy.…”

Rural financial development, spatial spillover, and poverty reduction: evidence from China

“…The findings of this research lead to three significant policy implications. Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has implemented a series of poverty alleviation measures including living aid, non-agricultural employment, and field training (Liu et al, 2020). In the future, the government and enterprises should pay more attention to developing rural finance.…”

“…While the literature has greatly improved our understanding of the relationship between rural financial development and poverty reduction, to the best of our knowledge, it can be further improved in three aspects. First, although China has made outstanding progress in poverty reduction and significant contribution to poverty alleviation worldwide (Liu et al, 2020), few empirical studies focus on Chinese rural financial development. Second, most empirical studies assume that financial development is independent between regions (Berhane & Gardebroek, 2011;Imai et al, 2010).…”