Institutionalizing anti-poverty is China’s biggest advantage
"China News Weekly" reporter/Xu Dawei
Published in the 968th issue of China News Weekly on October 19, 2020
Since the reform and opening up in 1978, more than 800 million poor people have been lifted out of poverty in China. As the world's most experienced country in poverty reduction, what is the "Chinese experience"?
When operating this topic, the biggest challenge I faced was how to deconstruct this set of poverty alleviation mechanisms in China.
As a model of government-led poverty alleviation, China's poverty alleviation is a sophisticated and complex systemic project. This poverty alleviation mechanism includes multiple subsystems, and systems are interconnected.
However, the difficulty in implementing the precise poverty alleviation strategy is how to establish a precise poverty identification mechanism.
From the selection and positioning of poor households, to changes in poverty standards, to precise policy implementation, this is a complex system.
Through interviews with front-line poverty alleviation cadres, provincial poverty alleviation offices and experts, after straightening out the cumbersome lines, it shows a sophisticated and interlocking system.
With regard to the understanding of China's anti-poverty "methodology", I found that the biggest advantage of Chinese-style poverty alleviation lies in institutionalizing anti-poverty.
The country implements the anti-poverty strategy in an organized and hierarchical manner from the top down, and incorporates the anti-poverty strategy into the national development plan.
Just as Lei Ming, Dean of the Institute for Development of Poor Areas of Peking University, said, the failure to institutionalize anti-poverty means that anti-poverty can only be a policy of measures and cannot form an overall effect.
Institutionalization has brought about the high efficiency of the national system. From the outside world, China is a typical administrative poverty alleviation. However, the reality is that for a long time, China has implemented a poverty alleviation and development model led by the government and participated by the market and society.
It is not a rigid leading method of administrative command in the traditional sense, but a flexible leading.
As the scholars interviewed summed up, the core experience of China’s poverty reduction is that driven by the political agenda of the ruling party, the government is the mainstay, relying on the combination of developmental poverty alleviation and guarantee poverty alleviation, and strategically implement the overall poverty alleviation strategy at different stages. The progressive evolution.
In short, the key to the success or failure of a country's poverty alleviation lies in the government's strong political determination to reduce poverty.
China News Weekly, Issue 38, 2020
Statement: The publication of "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing