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Fight against poverty

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-02 11:24

The World Bank's new yardstick to measure global poverty does not change the fact that China has had the largest and fastest poverty reduction in history.

Yet, for the Chinese government, with an increasingly bigger national coffer, the revision of global poverty line can serve as a compelling call for upgraded efforts to help lift the poor.

As it adjusted the hitherto recognized benchmark for measuring global poverty, the World Bank pointed out last week that more people are living in extreme poverty in developing countries than previously thought.

Last year, the World Bank said there were 1 billion people living under the previous $1 a day poverty mark. Now, the institution estimated that there were 1.4 billion people - a quarter of the developing world - living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day in 2005 in the world's 10 to 20 poorest countries.

Globally, the new poverty data means that there is no room for complacency. Though the world is still likely to reach the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the 1990 level of poverty by 2015, the more pervasive poverty in developing countries demands redoubled efforts from both local governments and big donor countries.

As a populous, developing country, China has indeed made remarkable achievements in poverty reduction.

According to the World Bank data, in China, the number of people in poverty fell to 207 million from 835 million in 1981. In the meantime, the number of poor has fallen only by 500 million around the world since 1981. That is why, excluding China from overall calculations, the world will fail to meet the UN poverty reduction targets.

The latest revision of the method the World Bank used to calculate poverty will inflate the number of poor people in China as well as that in other developing countries. But it will eclipse the real growth of the Chinese economy and substantial improvement of living standards in China.

The World Bank's decision to raise the global poverty line due to higher living cost, nevertheless, should boost domestic attempts to redefine poverty in view of the country's new economic reality.

After three decades of rapid economic growth that raised its per capita income from the level of a low-income nation to that of a middle-income country, China is well positioned to move more aggressively to combat domestic poverty now.

It is obvious that only when the fruits of rapid development have been more equally shared by all the people can the country build itself into a well-off and harmonious society.

The country's swelling national coffer, which has increased in double-digits for years on the back of strong economic growth and jumped by one-third in the first half of this year, should have enabled the government to introduce more effective policies to help lift the poorest.

Besides covering the cost of enough food and clothing, policymakers should also uplift the country's poverty line to include basic expenditure on education and medical service.

A new global poverty line will not change China's trend of poverty elimination. Instead, a higher living standard for the poorest will mark and speed up the real progress of the Chinese society.