Xi Jinping’s poverty alleviation campaign

For a mother, no burden is insurmountable. And a 32-year-old Beijing woman, whose image went viral a decade ago on the first day of the Spring Festival is living proof of this. Shown struggling under the weight of a bulging bag that was strapped to her back, a baby in one hand and a backpack gripped by the other, the photograph – and mother’s plight - broke hearts across China when it was released online. Since then, the photographer and journalist Zhou Ke has attempted to find the subject of the photo – a haunting depiction of the hardship and poverty faced by millions. After an eleven-year search, Zhou last month finally realized his dream when he tracked down the woman and made the heart

A rural town in northeast China has a unique strategy to jumpstart its economy: offer ridiculously low rent to city elites who crave a country getaway.  The Dashuibo local government hopes it can attract talent and money to the area by incentivizing city dwellers to become part-time residents and help raise the economic tide to lift all people.  The rental deals to kickstart this plan are absurdly cheap. For about US$1,000, a person can rent a farmhouse with a backyard for 20 years in the town of about 35,000 residents located in the eastern province of Shandong.  However, the deal does come with some commitments from the prospective tenant. They must spend at least US$30,000 to renovate the

A Chinese province of 80 million people has claimed that only 17 residents, from six families, remain in poverty, sparking intense debate about the veracity of official anti-poverty statistics. The coastal province of Jiangsu is the first to declare a near elimination of absolute poverty – which is defined in China as per capita net income of 2,300 yuan ($331) in 2011 prices – as part of President Xi Jinping’s drive to wipe it out and build China into a comprehensive well-off society by 2020. China has yet to publish official statistics for all of 2019, but the government has said the number of people in poverty was cut to 16.6 million at the end of 2018 and an additional 10 million were lif