By ANDREAS
PIEROTIC
China’s experience in poverty alleviation provides a valuable reference for Latin America. Its success, to a great extent, is due to a consolidated governance system that treats poverty alleviation as a State matter under the leadership of the State Council Leading Group on Poverty Alleviation and Development that formulates principles, policies and plans for impoverished regions. It oversees specialized offices at the provincial, prefecture, county and town levels. The Leading Office is the core for the implementation of long-term policies and works side by side sharing political responsibility for meeting poverty alleviation goals in all administrative levels with Party secretaries at the levels of province, city, county, town and villages across China.
This poverty alleviation governance system is one that Latin American countries should learn from to reduce poverty.
It is impossible for Latin American countries to draft long-term poverty alleviation policies because of their lack of strong and stable specialized poverty alleviation governance systems. As seen through China’s experience, important areas of poverty alleviation work depend on the capacity to support and sustain policies. The construction of infrastructure, housing and health facilities and industrial and agricultural development are clear examples of naturally long-term poverty alleviation policies that delivered results in China, and which entailed not only a long-term vision and sustained execution, but the power of allocating continual funds.
This is such a simple lesson, but one with a profound influence and impact. If there is one feature common to countries in the region it is their failure to allocate long-term budgets that finance enduring poverty alleviation policies.
Adaptability is also a key element of poverty alleviation policies. According to what is happening in China, long-term policies in the field always require adjustment according to the changing conditions. China’s policymakers never rule out the necessity to review their long-term policies according to new findings, acquired knowledge, foreign experience or even failure. With information and knowledge now easily shared and speedily incorporated, China’s governance system has shown a clear understanding of how this can be harnessed as a natural part of the policy review process. Designing long-term poverty alleviation policies does not mean petrifying them, but rather letting them evolve to suit their purpose.
Latin American countries have a long history of failed policies and projects. The path in the region to fulfill the sustainable development goals has left a long trail of well-financed, but flawed poverty alleviation programs. The lack of a long-term vision, sustainable policies and a faulty identification of the impoverished population are the fundamental reasons for this.
This probably is the most difficult issue that policymakers face. China has also encountered challenging issues in this regard that have required President Xi Jinping to personally address them, formulating in 2015 the need for “six precisions” in poverty alleviation work: precision in selecting beneficiaries, precision in project arrangement, precision in the utilization of funds, precision in tailoring measures to households, precision in sending the right personnel to poverty-stricken villages and precision in poverty elimination outcomes. He said people should be lifted out of poverty in five ways: through industrial development, through relocation, through ecological compensation, through education and through the social safety net.
Although this specific policy setup may not be completely suitable for Latin America’s specific circumstances, it sheds light upon the difficulties of poverty alleviation work and the significance of targeted policies. Latin America would particularly benefit by learning from China’s experience of developing mechanisms to precisely select the beneficiaries of poverty alleviation policies and tailoring the measures specifically for them.
The first major step that Latin American policymakers should take, in order to ensure that no one is left behind is identifying those who are living in poverty. Latin American governments should also understand that this is a dynamic process because of the success in lifting people out of poverty but also because families may fall into poverty because of accidents, health issues and natural disasters, for example.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
