As lawmakers gather today for their annual parliamentary session, high on the agenda is to prevent a return to poverty, improve the livelihoods of rural residents and make changes to Hong Kong's electoral system, said a senior official ahead of the meeting.
The top legislative body is widely expected to introduce political reforms for Hong Kong as Beijing asserts greater control over the semi-autonomous city.
In a press briefing late last night, the National People's Congress' spokesman Zhang Yesui said Hong Kong's electoral system "needs to keep pace with the times and make improvements".
Mr Zhang also defended China's poverty alleviation standard against criticism that it had set a low bar for success, saying the country met the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for eliminating poverty a decade ahead of schedule.
After President Xi Jinping declared victory over absolute poverty last week, China's years-long effort to transform the country into a "moderately prosperous society" is now moving into its next phase that officials call "rural revitalisation". But there are concerns that this is simply window dressing, with many of the policies a continuation of the previous programme, albeit with renewed goals. Furthermore, there are also concerns that those lifted from poverty could easily fall back into it.
Since Mr Xi took power in 2012 and made eradicating absolute poverty a priority, Beijing said some 98.99 million have been lifted from absolute poverty, and residents of over 800 poor counties whose average annual income was under 4,000 yuan (S$823) have been taken off the official poverty list.
While poverty is a multi-faceted issue, it is most commonly measured through income. China sets its poverty line at an income of US$2.30 (S$3.06) a day, slightly above the international extreme poverty standard of US$1.90 a day, but below that of higher-income countries. The World Bank states that nations should set their poverty line against the level of development.
"China's intensive campaign against poverty started in 2015, before the World Bank came up with the additional standards in 2018. So there's no such thing that China intentionally set a low threshold for elimination," said Mr Zhang in response to a question by The Straits Times.
The focus has now shifted to "rural revitalisation", a catch-all phrase representing a slew of policies to improve the livelihoods of some 600 million who do not live in the cities. A new central government rural revitalisation bureau was officially launched last month.
Economist Tang Min, who is also an adviser to the State Council, told ST that rural revitalisation is "broader and more complex".
While still in its early stages, the programme's ambit was set out in No. 1 Document, the first joint statement of the year put out by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council.
"If we want to rejuvenate the nation, we must revitalise the countryside," the document said, calling on the whole country to help make farming "efficient", the countryside "good for living", and the country's peasants "rich".
This is likely to take far longer than eradicating extreme poverty, Prof Tang said.
