A quick definition of terms: What Does It Mean to Eradicate Absolute Poverty? (There are more links in this article in the “Further Readings” section)

And here is a bullet point timeline: China’s Poverty Alleviation: Two Phases

Some highlights for Phase II (Targeted Poverty Alleviation):

—From 2013 to 2015, China allocated 24.78 billion yuan ($3.78 billion) to extend power grids to areas without electricity, benefiting some 1.55 million people. By the end of 2015, China had achieved full electricity coverage for its entire population.

—In April 2014, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development issued a work plan on the registration of the poor population, mobilizing millions of grassroots cadres across the country to carry out poverty identification. During the process, 128,000 villages, 29.32 million households, and 89.62 million people were identified as poor, according to national standards and procedures on poverty reduction. A database was established for every single impoverished person.

An important implementation note: China Assigned a Government Official to Every Poor Family. So there was always a specific person accountable for every single poor family’s progress.

—In February 2018, the number of rural people living in poverty had dropped from 98.99 million at the end of 2012 to 30.46 million at the end of 2017, and 68.53 million people had been lifted out of poverty in the past five years, a reduction of about 70 percent.

—Huang Wenxiu, who led the poverty-alleviation efforts in a village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, died in a rain-induced flash flood on June 17, 2019, at the age of 30.

Over the past eight years, over 1,500 poverty-alleviation cadres in the country had died in the battle against poverty.

Note: I highly recommend the TV series Daughter of the Mountains which tells Huang Wenxiu’s story, it also illustrates how targeted poverty alleviation worked at the lowest level.

—In October 2020, China’s Tibet Autonomous Region accomplished the historical feat of eradicating absolute poverty. By the end of 2019, Tibet had lifted 628,000 people out of poverty and removed 74 county-level areas from the poverty list.

—In November 2020, China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, with over 25 million people of various ethnic groups, bid farewell to absolute poverty, with the last 10 impoverished counties managing to end absolute poverty.

-More than 90% of registered poor received support for employment or technical training.

-More than two-thirds of poor population shook off poverty by migrant working and developing industries.

-22 provinces in central and western China identified 116,000 poverty alleviation products.

-Over 19 million poor patients received treatment. Nearly 10 million households who were impoverished by illness have been lifted out of poverty.