World Bank: China moves on battle against poverty

BEIJING, Oct. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from chinadaily.com.cn:

China has made significant contributions in eliminating extreme poverty, and it will further improve people's livelihoods, Martin Raiser, World Bank country director for China said.

"China has made very significant efforts, to try and target all of the poor families. There have been important efforts to try, to identify them and to give them adequate support," said Raiser in an interview with China Daily on Oct 12.

According to World Bank, more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past decades. And China has vowed to lift the last 5.51 million rural poor out of poverty by the end of this year.

But many people may face difficulties in the context of COVID-19, and China can further improve people's livelihood with a higher standard since China is an upper-middle-income country, Raiser said.

There are two ways in which the government can raise people's living standards further in China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), he said.

"The first is to make sure that economic growth is inclusive. And so that means that jobs are created, and that the wages of people at the bottom of the distribution continue to increase."

"The second way in which governments can help is through better targeting assistance. A stronger social insurance system, a stronger social transfer system, one that consistently covers all of the population, not just the rural, but also the urban population, would be one of the challenges in our views for China going forward," Raiser said.

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