5 - Rural poverty in post-reform China

Summary

The beginning of the reform period coincided with the rediscovery of poverty in China. It was claimed at this time that 100–200 million people were unable to feed, clothe and house themselves adequately. The Party Central Committee and the State Council turned their attention to the problem in September 1984 and called for ‘speeding up transformation of poor areas’. In 1986 the National People's Congress included anti-poverty projects in the Seventh Five Year Plan (1986–90). In the same year the State Council set up the Leading Group on Economic Development in Poor Areas to co-ordinate national and local anti-poverty efforts.

Chinese poverty has been treated primarily in recent years as a regional problem, and with some justification. Vast areas of the country, particularly in the northwest and southwest, suffer from climatic conditions that make farming difficult or impossible. Much of this area is mountainous or hilly, with poor soil and inadequate rainfall. Deforestation and erosion are advanced. The rural people who live in these regions, though a small fraction of the country's population, still comprise a large group, and experience low levels of well-being in comparison with the average for China. The prohibition against migration, in effect through much of the history of the People's Republic, tied the inhabitants of these regions tightly to their impoverished circumstances.