-- When Xi Jinping became China's top leader in 2012, he inherited a mission China had striven to achieve for generations, which is eradicating absolute poverty.
-- The entire system was mobilized to help the rural indigent population, with more than 250,000 teams dispatched to offer on-the-ground support and over 3 million people sent to countryside as special commissioners for poverty relief.
-- "Through eight years, under the current standard, China has eradicated extreme poverty for the nearly 100 million rural people affected," Xi said in the New Year speech that rang in 2021.
BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Poverty plagued China for thousands of years. Through generations of struggle after the founding of New China in 1949, the country had lifted 700 million out of penury by the end of 2012.
By then, China still had nearly 100 million people living under the poverty line, one ninth of the world's total. About 100,000 villages were yet to be connected by paved roads; some 4,000 villages had no access to electricity; and 8.3 percent of the country's rural households eked out a living in ramshackle, grass-thatched mud huts.
In November 2012, Xi Jinping became China's top leader, and he inherited a mission China had striven to achieve for generations, which is eradicating absolute poverty. The Communist Party of China (CPC) aimed to reach the goal by the end of 2020.
"To achieve this goal, China has to lift 10 million people out of poverty every year," said Eduardo Regalado, senior researcher at Cuba's International Policy Research Center. "That is, 20 people every minute."
Xi Jinping (R), general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, visits the family of Tang Rongbin, an impoverished villager in the Luotuowan Village of Longquanguan Township, Fuping County, north China's Hebei Province. Xi made a tour to impoverished villages in Fuping County from Dec. 29 to 30, 2012. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)
TARGETED POVERTY ALLEVIATION
At the end of 2012, Xi braved the ghastly winter temperatures to visit the villages of Luotuowan and Gujiatai, impoverished places set deep in the Taihang Mountains of Hebei Province. It was the first of a myriad of inspection tours dipping into the country's underdeveloped regions for Xi as the top Chinese leader.
Chatting with villagers, Xi was particularly concerned with difficulties they faced in their daily lives, such as problems concerning their income, food, education and medical care.
The austere living conditions were astounding. With similar hardship still haunting tens of millions of impoverished people in rural areas, Xi knew there was no time to spare.
While the entire nation held its breath waiting for his answer, Xi's commitment to this seemingly insurmountable task was never in question. He knew what it was like to be hungry.
"Meat would not grace our tables for months at a time," Xi once said, referring to the days when he was sent to Liangjiahe Village in northwest China's Shaanxi Province as a farmer some five decades ago. "How I wished to treat my fellow villagers to meat at least once."
From a junior local official to China's top leader, Xi always held dear the wish he had made. Ensuring the rural poor improve their lot has been his motivation all along.
Reviewing the whole situation, Xi determined that China had entered the most difficult stage of relieving poverty, and the root cause of every household's destitution needed to be identified before any targeted approaches could be formulated.
It was during a visit to Shibadong Village in Hunan Province that he proposed a targeted approach to address poverty.
"We should seek facts from truth; guidance and development must reflect the local conditions," Xi said. "This is what I mean by targeted poverty alleviation."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (C), also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of Central Military Commission, talks with local villagers and cadres at Shibadong Village in Paibi Township of Huayuan County in the Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Xiangxi, central China's Hunan Province, Nov. 3, 2013. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)
In an effort to meticulously tackle impoverishment in various locations, the authorities need to have a full grasp of the conditions on the ground. Therefore, China launched an unprecedented project to compile a database of every single underprivileged citizen.
In 18 months, the country had a complete nationwide register of its poor population. It was the first time in history that an all-encompassing poverty database had been compiled.
"Precision poverty targeting is supporting the government in targeting the remaining poor in the last mile," said Jim Yong Kim, former president of the World Bank.
"A SOLDIER'S PLEDGE"
In November 2015, Xi led a conference on poverty alleviation and development, the largest of its kind ever held.
