The Practical Logic and Evolutionary Path of Precise Poverty Alleviation
2026-07-30
The precise poverty alleviation strategy is a major innovation in China's poverty reduction theory and practice. In November 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping first proposed "targeted poverty alleviation" during his inspection in Shibadong Village, Huayuan County, Xiangxi Prefecture, Hunan Province. Afterwards, General Secretary Xi Jinping made a series of important statements on targeted poverty alleviation, comprehensively elaborating on the scientific connotation of this iconic concept, forming the theory of anti-poverty with Chinese characteristics, and providing fundamental guidance for the Party's leadership in poverty alleviation in the new era. Thoroughly studying and grasping the practical logic and evolutionary path of precision poverty alleviation is of great significance for continuously consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation, accelerating agricultural and rural modernization, solidly promoting comprehensive rural revitalization, and promoting common prosperity for all people.
Originating from practice and guiding practice
The concept of targeted poverty alleviation originates from practice and is used to guide practice. It fully demonstrates the political advantages of the leadership of the CPC and the advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics. It is a magic weapon for China to win the battle against poverty.
Anchoring the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects is a powerful driving force for proposing targeted poverty alleviation. Eliminating poverty, improving people's livelihood and gradually realizing common prosperity are the essential requirements of socialism and the important mission of the CPC. Since its establishment, our party has always united and led the people to strive for poverty alleviation. During the period of the New Democratic Revolution, the land revolution was carried out to achieve the principle of 'land to the tiller'. During the period of socialist revolution and construction, the promotion of socialist construction laid a solid foundation for poverty alleviation and improving people's lives. After the reform and opening up, large-scale development oriented poverty alleviation was carried out in a planned and organized manner. Entering a new era, achieving the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realizing the first centenary goal has become the main task facing the whole party. It is our solemn commitment to enable the impoverished population and impoverished areas to join the whole country in entering a moderately prosperous society in all respects. With the advancement of poverty reduction, the effectiveness of traditional extensive poverty alleviation has gradually weakened, making it difficult to adapt to the higher standards and requirements of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. There is an urgent need for a more scientific and effective poverty alleviation model.
The weakening trend of the poverty reduction effect driven by economic growth is the practical driving force for proposing targeted poverty alleviation. During a period after the reform and opening up, China relied on high-speed economic growth and implemented special poverty alleviation and development programs to drive poverty reduction. After the shift in economic growth rate, the role of solely relying on economic aggregate growth to alleviate the wealth gap continues to weaken. Structural contradictions such as regional, urban-rural, and group income differentiation have become prominent, and some deeply impoverished areas and special disadvantaged groups find it difficult to share the development dividends. To effectively respond to the complex demands of poverty governance, it is urgent to establish a targeted and precise resource allocation mechanism, open up channels for policies, funds, and projects to directly reach the impoverished population, and build a poverty reduction model that is suitable for the needs of economic and social development.
Cracking the pain points and difficulties of traditional extensive poverty alleviation is a practical requirement for proposing precise poverty alleviation. Inaccurate identification of poverty alleviation targets and excessive resource allocation are common shortcomings in global poverty governance and prominent pain points in China's long-term poverty alleviation work. Looking back to the end of 2012, there were still 98.99 million rural poor under the current national standards, with a poverty incidence rate of 10.2%. To lift deeply impoverished areas and special disadvantaged groups out of poverty has become an important task in poverty alleviation in the new era. Realistically speaking, the types of poverty are becoming increasingly diverse, and the causes of poverty are showing individualized and differentiated characteristics. Extensive poverty alleviation is difficult to match the assistance needs of each household, and building a new model of targeted poverty alleviation has become an urgent need at the practical level.
Precision poverty alleviation focuses on "precision"
The key to poverty alleviation lies in precision, and the success or failure lies in precision. General Secretary Xi Jinping has clearly pointed out that precision is the key to poverty alleviation, and we must adhere to precise support targets, precise project arrangements, precise use of funds, precise measures to households, precise personnel allocation to villages, and precise poverty alleviation results. The "Six Precision" is a concrete expression of precision thinking in the field of poverty governance, which constructs a complete and logically rigorous closed-loop governance system around the four major issues of "who to support, who to support, how to support, and how to withdraw".
Adhere to targeted positioning, accurately identify and document, and clearly answer 'who to support'. In response to the problems of vague poverty alleviation targets and mismatched resources, we will follow the principles of "county as a unit, scale control, hierarchical responsibility, precise identification, and dynamic management" to comprehensively promote the identification of impoverished populations, national unified filing and registration, and the construction of poverty alleviation information network systems. From April to October 2014, 800000 grassroots cadres were organized nationwide to go to rural areas to complete the first round of identification, targeting 128000 impoverished villages and 89.62 million impoverished people, and establishing records and entering information for them. To correct identification bias, from August 2015 to June 2016, a "look back" campaign was organized to establish records and cards, with 8.07 million people missing the poverty assessment and 9.29 million people being cleared of incorrect assessments; After 2017, regular dynamic adjustments will be implemented to continuously improve the accuracy of poverty identification. The system of establishing archives and cards has for the first time achieved refined management of poverty information to villages, households, and individuals, laying a data foundation for policy formulation, resource allocation, and effectiveness assessment, and solving the problem of poverty governance from the root.
Persist in consolidating responsibilities, establish organizational systems, carry out village based assistance, and systematically clarify "who will provide assistance". To ensure full coverage of poverty alleviation assistance, China has established a clear hierarchical and unified responsibility chain for poverty alleviation, forming a governance pattern of five levels of provinces, cities, counties, and villages working together to tackle poverty alleviation, transmitting poverty alleviation responsibilities step by step, and consolidating the tasks of governance entities at all levels. Simultaneously establish a village based assistance mechanism, implement the configuration standard of "one village, one work team, one household, one assistance responsible person", and coordinate the deployment of elite forces from party and government organs, enterprises, and institutions to go down to the grassroots level. During the poverty alleviation campaign, a total of 255000 village work teams, over 3 million first secretaries and village cadres were selected nationwide, linking nearly 2 million township cadres and millions of village cadres to take root in the front line of poverty alleviation, planning industries for the masses, resolving difficulties, and bridging the "last mile" of implementing targeted poverty alleviation policies, building a poverty alleviation system with diverse subject coordination and top-down organizational linkage.
Adhere to classified policies, adapt to local conditions and people, implement the "Five Batches", and scientifically solve the problem of "how to support". Based on the specific situation of poverty-stricken areas and populations, a demand-oriented classified assistance mechanism will be established to address the root causes of poverty caused by the differentiation of the registered population, and the "Five Batches" project will be implemented. At the central level, top-level planning and supporting policies have been introduced, and various regions have analyzed the causes of poverty on a village by village and household by household basis, tailored assistance plans, coordinated the promotion of industrial poverty alleviation, employment poverty alleviation, relocation for poverty alleviation, renovation of dangerous houses, education poverty alleviation, health poverty alleviation, ecological poverty alleviation, and innovated the development of poverty alleviation formats such as e-commerce, photovoltaics, and rural tourism; For special groups without the ability to work and those who find it difficult to lift themselves out of poverty, social security policies should be implemented to ensure that policies are tailored to each household and comprehensively implemented, forming a long-term assistance path that covers all types of poverty.
Adhere to closed-loop control, strictly eliminate poverty, strengthen assessment and acceptance, and standardize the definition of "how to withdraw". To ensure the quality of poverty alleviation and improve the authenticity and effectiveness of poverty alleviation work, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council have issued the "Opinions on Establishing a Poverty Exit Mechanism", which refines the quantitative standards, verification processes, and follow-up support policies for poverty-stricken households, poverty-stricken villages, and poverty-stricken counties to exit poverty, and establishes a poverty exit mechanism with clear rights and responsibilities, unified standards, and strict procedures. Simultaneously carry out the effectiveness assessment of poverty alleviation and development work, introduce third-party evaluation, and use the accuracy of identifying and withdrawing impoverished populations, public satisfaction, and the implementation of poverty alleviation funds as evaluation indicators. Adopt a comprehensive evaluation model that combines qualitative and quantitative evaluation, annual assessment and daily supervision, and departmental data and third-party surveys. And incorporate the assessment results into the performance evaluation system of local party and government leadership teams and leading cadres, using a rigid system to prevent false poverty alleviation and digital poverty alleviation, ensuring true poverty alleviation, supporting true poverty, and truly poverty alleviation, so that poverty alleviation can withstand historical tests.
By adhering to precise poverty alleviation, we have won the largest scale poverty alleviation battle in human history. All 832 poverty-stricken counties in China have been lifted out of poverty, nearly 100 million rural poor people have been lifted out of poverty, and more than 9.6 million poor people have been relocated, historically solving the problem of absolute poverty. Not only did it achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects as scheduled, but it also contributed a Chinese solution that combines theoretical depth and practical effectiveness to help developing countries around the world overcome poverty and implement the poverty reduction goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Grasp solid and detailed measures, normalize and provide precise assistance
After the comprehensive completion of poverty alleviation, the Party Central Committee has established a five-year transition period to consolidate and expand the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively link them with rural revitalization, making the foundation of poverty alleviation more stable and the results more sustainable. After the transition period ends, efforts to prevent poverty from returning to poverty will enter a new stage of normalized assistance. This year, the No. 1 central document systematically deployed the implementation of regular targeted assistance, which provided a solid guarantee for the long-term maintenance of the bottom line of no large-scale poverty alleviation, and reflected the continuation, deepening and expansion of the concept of targeted poverty alleviation.
Compared to targeted poverty alleviation, normalized targeted assistance is committed to solving the development problem of "from having to optimizing", which is a systematic summary and theoretical sublimation of the experience of targeted poverty alleviation, providing scientific guidance for normalized and long-term prevention of returning to poverty. One is to shift the governance goal from eliminating absolute poverty to stimulating endogenous development momentum. On the basis of consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and holding the bottom line of preventing large-scale poverty relapse, targeted assistance focuses on cultivating the endogenous development ability of poverty-stricken people, strengthening their resilience to multiple risks such as the market, diseases, and disasters, and is committed to solving the problems of long-term income growth and sustainable development. Secondly, the governance perspective has shifted from emphasizing the income dimension to multidimensional comprehensive governance. Deepen the theoretical understanding of the essence of poverty, analyze the causes of poverty from multiple dimensions such as economic income, public services, and cultural literacy, and focus on preventing and resolving the risk of returning to poverty. Thirdly, the governance pattern has shifted from targeted tackling to diversified collaborative governance. By coordinating various forces such as the government, market, and society, we have promoted the integration and linkage of various resources, achieved the integrated promotion of poverty prevention, industrial development, rural construction, and public service equalization, and improved the systematic, holistic, and collaborative nature of all work.
From the 8-year poverty alleviation campaign to the 5-year transition period, then to normalized and precise assistance, promoting comprehensive rural revitalization, and ultimately achieving common prosperity, it is a long-term historical process that must be sustained and continued. The current important task is to solidly promote the implementation and refinement of normalized and precise assistance.
On the one hand, incorporating regular assistance into the overall implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. Anchoring the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, adhering to the integrated development of urban and rural areas, promoting the task of preventing poverty from returning to poverty and the "five revitalizations" of rural industries, talents, culture, ecology, and organization, guiding financial resources to focus on supporting poverty-stricken areas and key projects for rural revitalization, and continuously enhancing the development vitality of poverty-stricken areas.
On the other hand, we must adhere to digital and intelligent empowerment. We should fully leverage the empowering role of agricultural technology, widely apply technologies such as smart agriculture and biological breeding, develop new agricultural productivity according to local conditions, and continuously enhance the resilience and stability of agricultural development. At the same time, we will focus on using digital technology to improve dynamic monitoring, risk warning, and precise policy implementation mechanisms, effectively enhancing the level of normalized assistance and precision.
The successful practice and valuable experience of eliminating absolute poverty in our country have deepened our understanding of the laws of human poverty reduction and enriched the development of human anti-poverty theory. We should continue to share China's experience in precision poverty alleviation, such as precise identification, precise policy implementation, and precise management. We should also engage in more extensive poverty reduction exchanges and cooperation with international organizations and developing countries, jointly explore practical paths for global poverty reduction, and contribute to the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind.(Outlook New Era)
Author: Huang Chengwei (Former Director of the China Rural Revitalization and Development Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University)
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