FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

The True Magnitude of China’s Poverty Reduction Achievements and Plans

March 10, 2019 (EIRNS)—The statement issued March 7 by Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, provided the following information, as per a Xinhua wire on the matter:

Part, but only part, of the goal of ending poverty in China is to bring the minimum annual income up to 4,000 yuan ($600). That converts closely to the same monetary parameter used by the World Bank internationally, which is $1.90 per day. But China has more than a monetary parameter that they are working on in addressing poverty: They are stressing basic physical-economic metrics.

“People shouldn’t have to worry about being able to afford food or basic clothing, and their needs in terms of medical services, education and housing should be met,” Liu said. Success so far has meant to “develop local industries, improve infrastructure, enhance public services and protect the environment, benefitting not only those formerly living in want, but all residents in rural regions,” he declared.

This last idea—that ending poverty benefits not just those lifted out of that condition, but the entire region or society—is key. Poverty, like unemployment, is an entropic drag on all of society, in fact on the entire human species: It is wasted potential productivity of the worst kind. Lifting people out of poverty into, first, minimally acceptable physical economic levels, and then into higher standards of living and productivity—which is Xi Jinping’s stated medium-term strategy on the “poverty” issue—means shifting that proportion of the population from being an entropic drag, to being an anti-entropic contribution to society as a whole.

With that in mind, consider what it means for the entire human species for China to have lifted 800 million people out of poverty over four decades. That is more than 10% of the entire human population on the planet, that has become a new anti-entropic force that is being unleashed! It is also certain that when China succeeds in entirely eliminating poverty in 2020, this will unleash a new wave of cultural optimism both in China and internationally, which will be a force as significant as the ending of poverty as such in the construction of a New Paradigm.