Xi Jinping, is expected to declare victory in the next two months in a campaign to eliminate extreme poverty in the country
Migrant workers work in the edible fungus poverty alleviation workshop. Congjiang County, Guizhou Province, China, September 22, 2020. Photograph by Costfoto / Barcroft Studios / Future Publishing (Photo credit should read Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Xu Rudong, a farmer in eastern China, thought he had left poverty behind long ago. He turned a small plot of land into a flourishing field of leeks, selling enough to pay for luxuries like fish and meat for his wife and four children. He even had money left over to buy an electric scooter.
Now Xu is once again struggling to pay for basic necessities like food and medicine. The economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has hurt his income, and severe flooding has devastated his crops.
“We are poor, poor people,” Xu, 48, said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Wangjiaba, a village of 36,000 in Anhui province. “We don’t eat meat anymore.”
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to declare victory in the next two months in a campaign to eliminate extreme poverty in the country. The Chinese economy is once again gaining strength, and the Communist Party’s achievements in reducing poverty are expected to feature prominently this week at a conclave of party leaders in Beijing.
Four decades of fast economic growth lifted most people in China out of poverty, and the Communist Party has vowed to help those who remain at the bottom. Xi’s anti-poverty drive is focused on around 5 million people who earn less than 92 cents a day, down from nearly 56 million five years ago.
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