Xi Jinping: making lives better – those I care about most

Every year ahead of the Spring Festival, Chinese president Xi Jinping can be found visiting impoverished rural areas of China.

No one – he insists – will be left behind on the march towards common prosperity.

Huang Yue has the second in a series of special reports entitled “Xi Jinping: making lives better.”

Deep in the mountains of central China’s Hunan Province lies Shibadong Village. It’s where Chinese president Xi Jinping first formulated his strategy of ‘targeted poverty alleviation.’

Visiting Shibadong Village in November 2013, the president met a poor family struggling to make ends meet. He posed a question to Shi Qiwen, the head of the household:

–“Do you have enough food to eat?”

–“Yes, we have a granary”

–“What about pocket money? Do you make money raising pigs or sheep?”

–“I raise two pigs…”

At the time, Shibadong Village had a population of less than 1,000 people, and a per capita annual income of less than 1,700 yuan, or 252 U.S. dollars, well below China’s poverty line. It was less than one-fifth of the per capita annual income of farmers across the country at that time.

Following Xi Jinping’s visit, and the initiation of his poverty alleviation strategy, the villagers of Shibadong were determined to take advantage of its labor force, crop production, breeding industry, Miao ethnic embroidery tradition, and tourism to develop the village.

Shibadong has since not only won the poverty alleviation “battle” but also provided a valuable template for other impoverished areas of the country.

But this fostering of unique industries, while providing a fruitful solution in many cases, is threatened by another challenge – poverty-related illness.

Statistics show that over 40 percent of the registered poor in China have fallen below the poverty line due to illness-related expenses.

During his visit to Zhaojiawa Village in the Lvliang Mountains of Shanxi Province in June 2017, President Xi Jinping dropped in on villager Liu Fuyou. The president sat on the edge of Liu’s hard bed, discussed his income and the things that worried him the most.

Liu Fuyou recalls:

“He came to my home and asked many questions. He asked what I spent my money on. I said apart from buying food, 80 percent of the rest was spent on my medicine, and I felt distressed.”

Xi Jinping decided that lifting people out of illness-induced poverty should become a major task of poverty alleviation work.

Over 800,000 primary medical and health personnel visited impoverished families, village by village over two months in 2017, defining their most pressing health needs.

Through medical insurance policies and other health services, China managed to lift 5.8 million people, impoverished because of illness, out of poverty last year.

In his 2019 New Year speech, Xi Jinping reviewed further significant progress China had achieved in tackling poverty.

“We have made great strides in our poverty alleviation efforts in the past year. Another 125 poor counties and 10 million poverty-stricken rural residents were lifted out of poverty. We reduced the price of 17 cancer-fighting drugs and included them on our medical insurance list. And we are continuing to tackle the financial strain that can accompany a family member falling ill. My heart goes out to the people living in hardship. I would like to wish all of them and their fellow villagers a prosperous and thriving New Year.”

According to government policy, China is aiming to lift all of its people in rural areas above the poverty line — per capita annual income of 2,300 yuan, around 341 U.S. dollars by 2020.

President Xi’s stated aim is to help those who used to live in hardship to lead lives of dignity.