At his village along a “poverty alleviation road” in China’s Hunan Province, farmer Liu Qingyou shares a booklet detailing how Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government has hoisted him and 100 million other Chinese from the breadline.
In it, the cause of his family’s hardship is diagnosed as “illness” and “schooling,” followed by a list of ways the government has helped, from grain subsidies to improving the yield of their orange groves.
Authorities in 2014 designated his family as impoverished as Xi ramped up a “targeted poverty relief” strategy that sent Chinese officials door-to-door to assess poorer households.
For Liu, the following years brought another boost: a new road cutting through Hunan’s mountainous countryside, helping transport produce to market twice as quickly and giving valuable links to nearby towns.
However, it has not been a smooth journey up China’s economic ladder.
Liu said that his harvests have not improved despite efforts by local authorities to help him diversify his crop.
Meanwhile, his wooden house does little to keep out temperatures that plunge close to the freezing point in the winter.
From his vantage point, Liu and his family of five still live modestly, and he worries for their future — despite being counted as lifted from poverty.
“We can get by, but our house is bad,” he said.
He wants what some others have received from the state: resettlement or enough funds to build a brick home.
The reasons he did not qualify are unclear to him.
“Why can’t we have the same?” Liu asked.
China’s decades-long war on want has yielded remarkable results.
“Over the past 40 years, China’s economic growth has resulted in more than 800 million Chinese escaping extreme poverty... This is an extraordinary achievement,” World Bank country director for China Martin Raiser said.
In 2015, Xi vowed to eradicate extreme poverty by last year, a pillar of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) goal to build a “moderately prosperous society” by its 100th anniversary later this year.
In November last year, Xi declared that the target was reached, heralding a “major victory.”
However, reality on the ground is patchier, with experts warning that rising incomes have made China’s poverty line outdated.
Complex criteria to determine who gets aid has also fueled unhappiness.
Liu’s family was officially lifted from poverty about four years after being designated — the product of a policy shift by Beijing away from relying on the breakneck growth that pulled nearly 1 billion people out of penury.
Authorities set a poverty line based on an income of about US$2.30 per day and offered targeted help to those under the line.
However, China is now an upper-middle income country, for which the World Bank suggests a benchmark that doubles the current threshold.
“The current low, unidimensional, rural poverty line no longer reflects what it means to be poor in China’s rapidly evolving society,” said Terry Sicular, a researcher at the University of Western Ontario.
Contacting villagers remains sensitive, with six vehicles of officials showing up unexpectedly during Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) Hunan visit.
Authorities asked about AFP’s interview plans and insisted on accompanying reporters after acquiring details like travel history for COVID-19 prevention.
A police officer showed up at another interview, staying to observe for issues deemed sensitive.
The CCP has based its legitimacy on delivering continued growth.
Ahead of last year’s deadline, party cadres sprung into action: identifying poor households, distributing funds and building infrastructure like the road by Liu’s house.
However, behind the poverty drive is at least US$1 trillion in loans over five years, and a burden of cost falling increasingly to local governments.
In Hunan, lack of local funds initially crippled progress of the winding, 63km road — finally completed after state broadcaster reports piled pressure on authorities.
“Transport became more convenient ... this has increased the income of regular folk by at least 30 percent,” Liu said.
Although Liu received a grant as a poverty-stricken household, he said that business has been weak.
A low table sits in his sparsely decorated house, by a stove where his son readies a lunch of cured bacon — a Hunan specialty.
A local government decision to diversify into tea plantations and plant new orange varieties hit earnings, Liu said.
“Before the trees were removed, our family could earn 20,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan [US$3,096 to US$4,644] a year,” Liu said, adding that this dropped to a fraction of the amount.
However, there are plenty of signs of growing wealth.
Per capita income of poverty-stricken households in Hunan grew from about 2,300 yuan to 12,200 yuan over five years, official data show.
The new road is a sign of the area’s increased wealth.
Farmer Xiang Xiuli, 53, said that villagers no longer had to carry produce across difficult terrain to the nearest roads for sales.
Her family said that their orange business had doubled in size and their children were now able to attend better schools.
For farmer Mi Jiazhi, officially lifted from poverty in 2017, things have never been better.
“We have all sorts of resources,” the 71-year-old said. “Things are good now... I can have 30,000 yuan to 40,000 yuan in income annually.”
With better income and help from his children, he would soon move into a newer, larger house, he said.
“I’m very happy,” he added.
However, more work is needed to ensure that the mass move up the economic chain is sustained.
As the poverty line rises, many city-dwellers would fall below it, Raiser said.
Beijing has already flagged the risk of backsliding, while villagers said that COVID-19 also weighed on earnings.
Ou Qingping (歐慶平), a poverty alleviation official working for the government in Beijing, in December last year warned that some people still reliant on aid had insufficient means to grow wealthier.
“Once alleviation policies are suspended, they are likely to return to poverty,” he said.
Setbacks like illness and unemployment — or pandemics — can also dunk households straight back into hardship.
“The elimination of poverty at a point in time does not eliminate poverty,” Sicular said.
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