India could learn from China's successful poverty alleviation: report

NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- India could draw lessons from the success story of China's poverty alleviation in the Southern Asian country's bid to alleviate poverty, the Indian Express suggested in a recent report entitled "How China beat extreme poverty; and what lessons it holds for India."

In 2021 China declared that it has eradicated extreme poverty according to the national poverty threshold, lifting some 770 million people since 1978 and that it has built a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the article cited a World Bank report as reporting.

It means, on average, every year China pulled 19 million poor people out of extreme poverty for the past 40 years, the article said on Oct. 10.

"China's poverty reduction success relied on two pillars," the report explained. The first pillar was rapid economic growth supported by broad based economic transformation. And the second was government policies to alleviate poverty, which initially targeted areas disadvantaged by geography and a lack of economic opportunities, but subsequently focused on poor households irrespective of location.

China's success benefited from effective governance "which was key to the successful implementation of the growth strategy as well as the evolving set of targeted poverty reduction policies," the article quoted the World Bank report as saying.

Quoting the data from a recent World Bank report on global poverty, the article said that India has the most number of poor people.

The World Bank report found that the number of Indians living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than 46 Indian rupees (around 0.55 U.S. dollars) a day, increased by 56 million in 2020. And nearly 600 million Indians survive on less than 84 Indian rupees (around 1.02 dollars) a day, said the report.