Over the past 40 years, China has helped more than 700 million rural residents out of being poor, and the poverty rate(贫困率) — the proportion of people living below the Chinese poverty line — had fallen among the rural population from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent at the end of 2017, official figures shows. China's achievements in poverty alleviation(扶贫) made the world look at China with admiration.
"For me, it is unbelievable that over 40 years, that is, over the course of one working lifetime, China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one that is about to eliminate(消除) absolute poverty," said Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council.
Varaprasad Sekhar Dolla, a professor of Chinese studies at India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, also spoke highly of China's achievements in poverty reduction. "If global poverty came down greatly in the last three or four decades, it's partly because of the Chinese contribution to reducing poverty within its own national boundaries," said the Indian scholar.
In the eyes of Khairy Tourk, a professor of economics with the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, "many countries look up to China to learn from its experience." "The Chinese experience is based on building a modern infrastructure(基础设施) and then on setting up special economic zones that would help underdeveloped countries to become more industrial," he added.
In the government work report delivered at the opening of the annual NPC session (全国人大会议) on March 5, China promises to reduce its population of rural poor by over 10 million this year.
