All the successes of China's fight against poverty

It's the rainy season and in Village of Lijiawan The asphalt is covered with a thin layer of water. It has long been a neighborhood, say its authorities, adding the renewal of roads between the progress made over the past five years. This remote cardinal point, located in Hubei Province, southeast of the country, is one of the social laboratories where the government of President Xi Jinping has deployed all the mechanisms to suppress misery. Model of success, its 844 inhabitants live with visits officers without getting discouraged before the camera seats.

According to official sources, the state spends the equivalent of $ 63 million a year on infrastructure works – installing drinking water systems, a wastewater treatment system and a photovoltaic plant – and promotion of the agricultural sector. and urban Work is done in collaboration with private companies that find in the city of work and resources to set up their businesses, in this case freshwater fishing and the production of medicinal herbs. Thus, since 2015, the rent per inhabitant It went from $ 368 to $ 1,560.

"There have been more poor people here since 2016," said Wu Xinhua, head of the Huangzhou District Poverty Alleviation Office., which reports that even if the plan belongs to the government, the results depend exclusively on the citizen's engagement. Organized into cooperatives, each of them must be part of the gear that keeps progress alive. And his role in the lens is visible. Each family has a sign at the door of their home that qualifies it between one and ten stars based on values ​​such as hygiene and participation in community activities. A system whose price is social recognition. The "instructions" to achieve optimal results and ensure the future are also reflected in the murals of the region.

Lijiawan is only one more element of the official macro project. "Reducing rural poverty is a historic mission of our party and has been divided into five stages since 1949," Fujun said.Deputy Director of Policies and Regulations, State Council Office of Poverty and Development, at a press conference attended by Ámbito Financiero. "So far, the volume of the vulnerable sector has declined significantly. Of the 98,960,000 people in this group in 2012, the year of the beginning of the last phase, there are about 16,000,000, or 1.7% of the country's population, "he said. added.

The program, which may differ from one region to another, also includes the removal of whole villages – to date, 80,700,000 million people have already moved to areas where conditions are better – and improved existing dwellings. "Relief can come from stimulating production, offshoring, ecological and educational support, or social security. Business loans are other tools we use, "says Li.

Despite the achievements, the engine slowed down. Today, 13 million Chinese people abandon poverty every year, half of them in the 1990s.

The government is reaching the last line of its plan with difficulties in reaching its targets in Tibet and the Tibetan regions of four provinces (South of Xianjing, Liangshan of Sichuan, Nujiang of Yunnan and Linxia of Gansu), all in mountainous areas. with adverse natural environments. To improve their quality of life, relocation is envisaged, a measure with a huge sociocultural impact that its inhabitants resist, or large-scale investments.

On the other hand, China continues to experience a vertiginous development. Government plans managed to completely transform the population distribution and, in 2012, the rate of urbanization surpbaded the rural level for the first time in history. This displacement has been one of the drivers of the eradication of poverty, but the exodus from the countryside to the city poses new challenges. Every time a farmer settles spontaneously in a city, that is to say without the support of the government, he does not enjoy the same rights as a citizen holding an official residence certificate, which allows access to badistance. health and education, among other areas. Thus, those who leave for free are left in a vulnerable position and subject to indigence.

At the same time, the wealth gap widened in 2017 for the first time in five years. The Gini coefficient, which is generally used to measure differences in incomes of inhabitants of a given region, increased slightly from 0.462 in 2015 to 0.465, according to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS). Zero means that everyone's income is the same, while that shows that all income goes to one person. In addition to this result, China is now the second largest country in the world with the largest number of millionaires behind the United States: 490 people have a fortune of at least 500 million dollars.

If the will to eradicate poverty is not accompanied by a decision to fight against inequalities and the enrichment of the elite, efforts can be tarnished in the country of the hammer and the sickle.