'China consolidates poverty alleviation achievements in 5-year period'

BEIJING - China has made continuous efforts to consolidate and expand its poverty alleviation achievements in a five-year transitional period after the country, in February 2021, solemnly declared a complete victory in eradicating absolute poverty, a think tank report said on Friday.

The report, titled "Striving for a Better Life for the People: China's Practical and Theoretical Innovations in Consolidating and Expanding Poverty Alleviation Achievement," was released by Xinhua Institute, a national high-level think tank of Xinhua News Agency.

According to the report, following its victory in the battle against poverty, China set a five-year transitional period to consolidate and expand the achievements as part of the efforts to promote rural revitalization.

In response to complex challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, economic headwinds and growing global development disparities, China has worked to bridge the urban-rural divide by promoting the experiences from Zhejiang's "Green Rural Revival Program" and deepening east-west collaboration to address regional imbalances and underdevelopment, making sustained efforts to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas as well as among different regions, the report noted.

The year 2025 marks the final year of the five-year transitional period. Throughout this period, China has firmly upheld the bottom line of preventing any large-scale relapse into poverty, it said.

This has been manifested in employment and income. For instance, as of the end of 2024, 33.05 million individuals from formerly impoverished households were engaged in employment, a figure that has remained steadily above 30 million for four consecutive years, according to the report.

In 2024, the per capita disposable income of rural residents in counties that had shaken off poverty reached 17,522 yuan (about 2,450 U.S. dollars), a 24.7 percent increase over 2021. For four consecutive years, income growth in these counties has outpaced the national average for rural residents, according to the report.

The report also summarized that the transitional framework constituted a four-pronged long-term mechanism for preventing relapse into poverty, which was reflected through the continuity of responsibilities, policies, resources and funding support, and poverty monitoring.

"As a pivotal institutional arrangement for transitioning from the eradication of absolute poverty to the pursuit of common prosperity, China's five-year transitional period established a comprehensive mechanism for monitoring and preventing a return to poverty," it added.