By Md Enamul Hassan
SINCE its establishment in 1921, the Communist Party of China has gone through many ups and downs. But the Party has never deviated from its genuine commitment to serve humanity. As part of the fulfillment of the promise, it has tirelessly been working to bring a smile to the face of destitute, underprivileged and distressed.
With its great efforts and timely programs, the CPC has hugely contributed to bringing about prosperity and peace to mankind throughout its almost a century-long journey. On top of all, the Party has set an unprecedented record in human history by contributing to the alleviation of poverty.
The CPC founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The Party has contributed to alleviating more than 70 percent of the total poverty eradicated worldwide ever since. Under its prudent leadership, in the past seven decades, the CPC has managed to lift hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. The huge number accounts for more than 70 percent of the global poverty alleviation during the period.
Furthermore, the Party leadership is determined and on course to eradicate extreme poverty from all over China by 2020, which will make the country the first among developing countries in the world to end absolute poverty despite having such a huge population. The United Nations has set the target of ending extreme poverty in the world by 2030. In this case, The CPC has led China some 10 years ahead of any other poverty-stricken countries. The Party leaders have driven China to the last mile of its poverty eradication journey and only 0.6 percent of its population– 5.5 million people– now lives in extreme poverty.
This is a tremendous achievement and great service of the CPC. However, tremendous achievement has not been accomplished easily. The Party leaders, activists, and people of China had to march through very long and bumpy paths. Because at the time of its founding, China had no adequate food and clothing for the huge size of its population. Most of the Chinese led a poor life. According to statistics, the per capita annual income was less than 100 yuan. China was ranked 40th in the list of the global economy at that time. Century-long foreign invasion since the Opium War and civil wars were salient reasons for the impoverishment of once-prosperous China.
However, thanks to the adoption of far-reaching economic reforms and opening-up policy by the successive leaderships of the CPC, China could achieve this incredible success in poverty alleviation. The leaderships have also taken a combination of measures that facilitated a rapidly expanding labor market, and a series of government transfers such as an urban subsidy, and the introduction of a rural pension.
The CPC has also introduced pragmatic and timely poverty reduction strategies that include the promotion of industrialization and urbanization, which provides poor areas with infrastructures such as roads, electricity, and communication technology. The strategies have also developed tourism in rural areas contributing to raising wages and creating jobs. The Party has effectively implemented its “targeted poverty alleviation strategy” that features a multitude of means to tackle poverty and ensure the long-term development of China.
The World Bank in its 2016 report precisely affirmed that State-sponsored programs of China have raised poor people’s earnings. The implementation of early childhood development, provision of quality education and healthcare, cash transfers to poor families, construction of rural infrastructure, and giving of subsidy to rebuild homes have been effective in reducing poverty.
Many economists are of the view that as a result of a series of effective, results-oriented, and pro-people strategies adopted by the successive leaderships of the CPC, the PRC has been successful in contributing to eradicating over three-fourths of the global poverty alleviation by eradicating around 99.4 percent of its poverty since its establishment. The situation in China has been improved to such an extent that poverty is now defined as a rural problem.
Given the analysis, I could conclude that the CPC has accomplished a great service to humanity by lifting such a huge number of people out of poverty in only seven decades. Much to my surprise, the accomplishment of the CPC has remained underreported even in the age of free and unbarred circulation of information and news.
– The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
