China’s poverty alleviation efforts had traditionally utilized several important strategies. Financial payment methods that are tilted to poor areas through special fund transfer payments, fiscal systems design, and tax incentives, Relief of poverty through encouraging poverty-stricken people to participate in social work or public welfare labor activities. The Adequate Food and Clothing Program by which participants borrow agricultural material and equipment and repay with grain. Poverty-reduction models for poverty-stricken households to obtain stable sources of economic income through the development of regional pillar industries based on planting and breeding industries. In the Eastern provinces, municipalities and non-government organizations support counterparts in poor rural households in poverty-stricken areas in western China by means of financial support, intellectual support, economic cooperation, and talent training. Emphasis on rural tourism opportunities to alleviate regional poverty. Resettling poor communities to more wealthy areas with greater opportunities. Increasing educational opportunities in rural high poverty areas.
The specific measures for these poverty alleviation models and approaches mentioned above are implemented by the government, which not only puts enormous pressure on public finances, but these measures influence the poverty-stricken population through monetary policies such as monetary income and non-monetary income, it does not increase the ability of the poor to develop themselves, which in many cases increases the dependency of poor people on these poverty alleviation measures.
There is also no synergy between multiple measures. There is very little attention to the issue of psychological poverty. All poverty alleviation models and measures aim at poor groups and lacks thorough identification and pertinence on individuals living in poverty. The prerequisite for large-scale and batch-oriented poverty alleviation for the entire poor is the existence of a large number of problems of homogeneity and regional poverty. However, after decades of poverty alleviation, this premise has gradually disappeared in China. Therefore, the remaining poverty alleviation problems at the present stage are difficult to address. The problems of poverty are numerous and complex, and the causes of poverty are very different. The traditional mode of poverty alleviation and the method cannot achieve the effect of getting rid of poverty completely. It requires a new poverty alleviation model that can carry out individual identification, precise positioning, and separate policy implementation. Under such conditions, targeted poverty alleviation emerged.
The important idea of “targeted poverty alleviation” was first introduced in November 2013 when Xi Jinping visited Xiangxi of Hunan Province for the first time to provide important instructions for “seeking truth from facts, adapting to local conditions, classifying guidance, and targeted poverty alleviation”.
By the end of 2015, Chinese president Xi Jinping brought up the idea eliminating poverty in China by 2020, which is 10 years ahead of the target of “eliminating poverty in all forms by 2030” set by the United Nations. In the past five years, the poverty alleviation has achieved a decisive progress in combating poverty. More than 60 million living in poverty have escaped poverty. The poverty rate has dropped from 10.2% to below 4%. The targeted poverty alleviation policies raised by the communist party creatively are reducing poverty by 13 million people each year.
Compared with extensive poverty alleviation policies in the past, targeted poverty alleviation is a breakthrough and innovation in the practice and institutional mechanisms of traditional poverty alleviation theories. It is based on reflections on past poverty alleviation efforts of China and other countries. It is a method of poverty eradication that seeks truthfulness, efficiency, and scientific precision. Its guiding ideology is to change the thinking and development philosophy of poverty alleviation, emphasize the fine and accurate poverty alleviation, and its fundamental point is to create a new social form, that is, to eliminate absolute poverty in society.
The implementation of the targeted poverty alleviation strategy has achieved remarkable results. The rural poor population has been substantially reduced, the economic and social development in poverty-stricken areas has been realized in an all-round manner, the poverty-stricken areas have significantly improved their ability to fight poverty. At the theoretical level, it has promoted the theoretical transformation of China’s poverty alleviation from poverty alleviation and development to poverty governance, and enriched and developed Marxist anti-poverty theory and international poverty governance theory.