Read on Twitter
1/ "Zero poverty," state media headline after Guizhou province declared its last nine counties lifted out of poverty this week. Propaganda or provable? I clarify in this thread what this means, what's next, what to celebrate and the challenges ahead https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-23/China-eliminates-absolute-poverty-one-month-before-schedule-VEp8VAJJS0/index.html
2/ First, metrics. China uses two indices to measure poverty: household & county. 'Household poverty' is measured by income (<US$600/person/year), sufficient food & clothes, safe housing, basic medical services & compulsory education. 'County poverty' is based on a county's
3/ average annual per capita income. An 'impoverished county' is a place "where poverty rates hover above 3% in the nation's western areas or 2% in richer coastal regions," per China Daily. So the county metric is a helpful tool to target resources to https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202003/13/WS5e6ae01aa31012821727ec2e.html
4/ greatest need, but not the most accurate measure of household poverty. I fully expect household poverty to also be eradicated by year end, as I noted on Sinica Podcast w/ @gaoqin505 @KaiserKuo and @goldkorn. The campaign is too big to fail. Xi has spent https://supchina.com/podcast/poverty-eradication-by-2020-a-reality-check/
5/ too much financial and political capital to NOT meet the Party's goal of eradicating poverty by 2020. Monday's announcement was from a province, so expect official inspections and verification of county and household poverty metrics over the next month and a formal declaration
6/ from central gov't and, most importantly, Xi, the face of the campaign. China met UN's Sustainable Dev't Goal to end poverty by 2030 TEN YEARS EARLY. This will undergird Communist Party's claims to legitimacy and the state media blitz thru CCP's 100th birthday party in 2021.
7/ Almost 100 million out of poverty in 8 years. Sometimes stats numb...Remember: these are 100 million PEOPLE whose lives are better. These are my neighbors from the remote village in Yunnan where I lived for two years. I celebrate with them: new homes, healthcare, education.
8/ Also remember the poverty line is very low: <US$600/person/year. Millions of PEOPLE still teetering on edge of extreme poverty and dependent on new and expanded government welfare programs to keep them out of poverty. Life is vulnerable for so many. https://www.icwa.org/profiles-in-adaptabilityin-rural-china-country-people-in-a-land-of-drastic-change/
9/ Hukou and land-use policies & poor education and nutrition set up today's rural children for poverty tomorrow as second-class citizens. More than 70% of children have rural hukou, and China has high school attainment rates of ~30%, the lowest of ALL middle income countries...
10/...writes @StanfordREAP's Scott Rozelle in his new book Invisible China (READ IT!). He warns of the looming middle income trap and growing rural-urban inequality unless China has education and nutrition policy interventions. @DSORennie https://merics.org/en/events/end-poverty-china-2020
11/ Beyond China's poorest, 600 million still live on ~US$140/month, "barely enough to cover monthly rent in a mid-sized Chinese city," Premier Li Keqiang noted recently, highlighting the work still ahead. That's a lot of people with little money.
12/China may have eradicated poverty, but it still has a poverty problem. As I wrote in @ForeignAffairs last week, "…the reality of China’s antipoverty campaign is more complicated [than the Chinese government narrative]. The program is neither a figment of government propaganda
![12/China may have eradicated poverty, but it still has a poverty problem. As I wrote in @ForeignAffairs last week, "…the reality of China’s antipoverty campaign is more complicated [than the Chinese government narrative]. The program is neither a figment of government propaganda](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Enst1HwUwAAM_11.jpg "12/China may have eradicated poverty, but it still has a poverty problem. As I wrote in @ForeignAffairs last week, \"…the reality of China’s antipoverty campaign is more complicated [than the Chinese government narrative]. The program is neither a figment of government propaganda")
13/"...nor an unalloyed success. Two things became clear to me after two years spent living side by side with the campaign’s rural beneficiaries: China will indeed have eradicated poverty by its own metrics by the end of this year, and it still has a long way to go...
14/14 "...to address the growing urban-rural divide." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-11-19/china-ending-poverty-just-beginning?utm_campaign=tw_daily_soc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_posts @niubi @EmilyZFeng @iandenisjohnson @cdcshepherd @heguisen @dtiffroberts @alecash @BeijingPalmer @ICWAnews @mstandaert @supchinanews @NorthropKatrina @stevenleemyers @suea_thornton
