Editor’s Note: “When future historians write the chronicles of our time, a close-up story is likely to be China’s targeted poverty alleviation,” said Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of The Kuhn Foundation and recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal (2018), who has long been researching the poverty alleviation efforts in China.
Kuhn, 77, has been telling the world the China story for more than 30 years. He has published books such as How China’s Leaders Think and The Inside Story of China’s 30 Year Reform.
He also went deep into the poor areas of China to produce the documentary Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty.
Through onsite visits and filming, Kuhn gained a profound understanding of China’s “targeted” poverty alleviation, and he believed that China’s commitment and strong implementation of poverty alleviation are worthy of being studied and referenced by other countries.
Global Times (GT) reporter Zhang Mengxu interviewed this old China hand to understand why he spends so much time studying China’s experience in fighting poverty, and why he made comments praising China’s elimination of absolute poverty as an epic achievement.
GT: What do you think of China’s eradication of extreme poverty? Kuhn: I have been telling China’s story to the world for more than 30 years, and although China has many achievements, none has been as representative of the real China, and none has been so powerful in impact, as China’s commitment to eradicate all extreme poverty in the country and China’s systematic implementation to make it happen by the end of 2020.
China’s poverty alleviation program is the best story to undermine biases and disrupt stereotypes about China.
A good part of the reason is that foreigners have very limited knowledge of China’s poverty alleviation commitment and campaign.
Over the past 30 years, intensely over the past 15 years, I have traveled across China, visiting over 100 cities with my long-term partner, Adam Zhu, for research, investigations, books and essays, television and documentary productions.
Yet, after all that, as much as I thought I knew China, I did not appreciate all that is required for poverty alleviation until I started going on-location in poor regions, especially in remote mountainous villages. I had the opportunity to speak with poor villagers and hear their stories.
GT: You participated in the documentary Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty last year.
Kuhn: On July 31, 2019, PBS SoCal, the PBS flagship public television station in Southern California in the US, premiered my documentary on China’s historic poverty alleviation campaign: Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty, the first in-depth documentary about China’s poverty alleviation campaign to be broadcast abroad. In May 2020 it was broadcast again in the US.
We met poor villagers, local officials, and special monitors – those being lifted out of poverty, those assigned to do the lifting, and those recruited to do the checking.
The documentary provides a textured and intimate portrayal of China’s poverty alleviation and the systems and organizations needed to implement it.
As much as I thought I knew China, I was startled to discover that every poor family in China has its own file, each with its “targeted” plan to lift each above the line of absolute poverty – that’s millions of poor families with customized plans, each checked monthly, recorded on paper, and digitized for central compilation and analysis.
That’s millions of households! Equally startling, young Party cadres are dispatched to impoverished villages to manage poverty alleviation for two years.
But they were happy and excited, knowing they were contributing to China’s national commitment to eradicate all extreme poverty and that their grassroots work would help their future careers.
GT: What are the most important experiences in China’s poverty alleviation work?
Kuhn: It was on November 3, 2013, when President Xi Jinping was visiting Shibadong village and he first proposed the concept of “targeted” or “precision” poverty alleviation.
“Targeted” means individualized procedures and programs, with the policies to support them, including standardized definitions of poverty, identification criteria of poor people, and customized plans and programs to bring each out of poverty.
The success of China’s targeted poverty alleviation campaign, bringing 10 to 14 million people per year out of poverty since 2013, depends on strict, quantitative, and transparent procedures.
Start by defining absolute poverty with standardized methods, using annual income, but also including tests of adequate healthcare, education, and sanitation, like flush toilets.
Going beyond the great good of poverty alleviation itself, and understanding how the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) enabled the poverty alleviation campaign to fulfill its mission, give deep insight into the CPC’s governance structure and its organizational capabilities.
This is especially important at this time of heightened awareness of China’s increasing role in international affairs and the increasing sensitivities to it.
And for those foreigners who marvel at how China contained the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, with so few cases and deaths compared to other regions and countries, I point out that the common root of China winning the war to contain the contagious COVID-19, and China winning the war to eradicate extreme poverty, is the CPC’s leadership and organizational capacity.
GT: Do you think China’s experience in poverty alleviation has any reference value for other countries? Kuhn: What can the world learn from China’s success in poverty alleviation? Many things, to be sure.
But first, each country is different. Each culture has its own history; the natures of different peoples are indeed different.
We cannot take programs from one country and impose them wholly, without adaptation, on another country.
However, the principles are what’s important. And China’s principles of poverty alleviation are clear: “targeted” poverty alleviation employs specific measures to fit specific circumstances and needs, and a clear organizational structure to implement those measures, monitor them, and check them.
We think of poverty programs in terms of criteria, measures, mechanisms, and procedures.
And indeed, China has pioneered micro-businesses, education, relocating whole villages, eco-compensation, and social security. These can be adapted to other countries.
What all countries should recognize in the fight against poverty is the critical importance of motivating officials to make poverty alleviation a priority in the hierarchy of values in their work.
This can come only from the top down. This is a big lesson that China offers to the world.
GT: How do you evaluate China’s development over the past few decades from a historical dimension?
Kuhn: China’s remarkable development since the beginning of reform and opening-up, sustained for more than four decades, is the epic story of the largest population on earth undergoing the greatest transformation in history.
I have been privileged to witness this transforming process firsthand and up close for more than three decades.
I consider this long-running opportunity a great gift from the Chinese people to me.
The eradication of extreme poverty in China exemplifies China’s developmental miracle, but now that China has eradicated poverty successfully by the end of 2020, what comes next, especially in rural areas?
GT: Recently, some personalities and media outlets questioned that “China’s current poverty alleviation standards are lower than the international poverty standards.”
What’s your comment?
Kuhn: China has made an accomplishmentt of historic importance by eradicating all extreme poverty across the country.
But we stress the word “extreme.” No one in China claims that the country has eliminated all relative poverty.
That’s the reason for the transition to rural vitalization, to attack relative poverty by transforming rural areas into desirable places to live and work and raise families.
There are also the large issues of the relative poverty of migrant workers and their families in urban areas.
