School of Social & Environmental Sustainability

^{Abuluoha village, China's last village without a road, is connected to the outside world with its new road in Butuo county, Sichuan province as seen in June, 2020. [Photo/XINHUA]}

Within a span of 40 years, China has lifted about 800 million people out of absolute poverty and become the second-largest economy in the world. In 1980 China's per capita GDP was $194.80－10 percent of Brazil ($1,947.28) and 73 percent of India ($266.58). But thanks to years of good economic management and rapid growth, its per capita GDP increased by more than 58 times to $10,216,6 in 2019－nearly 5.45 times of India ($2,099.60) and 1.31 times of Brazil ($8,717.20), according to World Bank data.

China's economic performance over the past four decades has been the envy of the world. To top it, it eradicated absolute poverty last year. The UN Millennium Development Goals Report of 2015 said the goal to reduce global poverty by half by 2015, compared to the 1990 level, was possible primarily because of China's powerful performance.

In 2012, about 100 million people in China were still living in absolute poverty. Taking note of that, President Xi Jinping later stressed that elimination of poverty was one of the three "tough battles" China was fighting, which it would win by the end of 2020. The other two were to reduce environmental pollution and prevent risks

Read More

---

First published: 12 April 2021