Then the new coronavirus pandemic wiped out the global economy.
China closed factories in January and February to prevent a major outbreak and contain the virus, but at the same time seriously damaged employment and production in the country.
In front of journalists in his Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who strictly controlled the annual press conference at the end of the NPC, admitted that some Chinese citizens had been impoverished by the pandemic.
“Before Covid-19 attacked, there were some five million people living below the poverty line. But due to the disease, some may have fallen back into poverty,” said Li. “Therefore, we now face a bigger task to meet our goal.”
Experts say Xi’s chances of achieving his grand goal largely depend on whether Beijing can get the country back to work quickly.
“As long as employment continues to recover or for the most part recovers by the end of the year, they will be very close to reaching their poverty targets,” said Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Stanford University Rural Education Action Program.
“[But] there are many things that say this will be a persistent problem. “
A gigantic company
For much of the 20th century, China was one of the most impoverished countries in the world.
Since then, that number has declined rapidly. In 2012, the Chinese government announced that there were 115 million people living in absolute poverty. With less than 10 million left in poverty at the end of last year, it seemed that China was on track to achieve its goal.
Shenjing He, a professor at the University of Hong Kong studying urban poverty, said that although only a relatively small number of people remained in absolute poverty, they were among the most affected.
“They are those people who really suffer from the problem of poverty,” he said. “They live in very poor conditions and are generally found in mountainous areas and very remote places.”
He, the Hong Kong professor, said the Chinese government has tasked national scientific bodies to closely monitor its progress in poverty alleviation in 2020, to ensure that the goal is met in a “very important year.”
But according to my colleagues in China, they don’t think there is a big problem for the government to honor this commitment, “he said.
Millions of unemployed
Independent experts say getting an accurate picture of rural poverty on the ground is difficult, in part because of the size of China and in part because of its government secrecy, especially under Xi’s increasingly authoritarian and opaque administration.
But there are already signs that China’s poor may have been hit hard by the coronavirus economic downturn.
However, that official number does not include people in rural communities or a large number of the 290 million migrant workers who work in construction, manufacturing and other vital, low-wage activities.
‘A perfect storm’
“Rural worker employment was essentially zero for a full month after the quarantine began,” the report said.
Half of the villages surveyed by the Stanford University team reported average losses of about $ 281 to $ 704 (2,000 to 5,000 yuan) in March.
To deal with that income bump, “half of them have reduced their nutrition and food diversity, have gone to the diet of grains and vegetables instead of meat and fruit,” said Rozelle of REAP, study author. Have It also reduced a little bit the expenses in education of his children and the expenses in health problems not related to Covid “.
Some CAAS estimates found that farmers’ wages could drop by as much as 40%.
To make matters worse in some rural communities, parts of China have seen their worst floods in decades in June, just as they began to recover from the coronavirus.
According to state media, tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed along the Yangtze River and at least 12 million people affected, costing the economy around $ 3.6 billion.
John Donaldson, poverty expert and associate professor at Singapore Management University, said that in many ways the coronavirus had been a “perfect storm” for people living in poverty in China, affecting many different sectors at the same time .
“The factories are not yet operating at full strength, partly due to fear of the coronavirus, you have construction [being put on hold]Even hotels that buy a lot of country food have few businesses, “he said.
In addition, Donaldson said that local officials whose responsibility it had been to monitor poverty alleviation measures had been distracted by their fight against the coronavirus.
The message
Despite setbacks, the ruling Communist Party and the state media have been waging a concerted campaign to assure their national audience that they will meet their goal.
In early June, Xi toured the northern Ningxia province visiting families and observing a workshop, built with poverty alleviation funds, where villagers produced cardboard boxes.
Experts generally agree that the Chinese government is highly unlikely to announce that it has breached its poverty alleviation goals in late 2020. Donaldson said the goals are likely to be met or are false enough to say that they have been fulfilled has been fulfilled
But there is concern that even if Beijing meets its goal of eliminating absolute poverty by the end of the year, there is still a long way to go to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of its citizens.
For years Xi has claimed that China is becoming a “moderately prosperous society”.
However, speaking at his press conference in May, Li said there were still 600 million people, about 40% of the population, who lived on a monthly income of about $ 140 (1,000 yuan).
“It is not even enough to rent a room in a medium-sized Chinese city,” Li said.
Donaldson said his biggest concern is that once the Chinese government announces that it has eradicated absolute poverty, local authorities may stop considering all poverty as an important issue, despite the fact that millions of people who still need urgent assistance.
“I mean it’s the bottom line: yes poverty is eliminated, how many people are poor after this campaign? No one will know, “he said.
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