Discussion keeps the world turning.
China lifted nearly 100 million people out of poverty.
That was an achievement praised worldwide.
But the real test begins here.
How do you keep it out?
The country's built a digital net that spots disaster before it strikes, tracking medical bills, income drops and housing risks.
Yet this kind of early warning system is only half the battle.
The deeper question is how to build a life worth staying for.
And today we're digging into the stories unfolding across Chinese villages right now.
Coming to you from our studios live in Beijing, this is Roundtable and I'm Fei Fei.
For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Heatherly and Yu Shun.
First, on today's show.
Lifting more than 98 million people out of poverty is something and one thing and quite an achievement.
But also here it begins of the harder part how to make sure that people don't fall back into poverty.
Well, here in China, the country is now using algorithms to do what humans couldn't.
Spot disaster before it strikes.
You know those medical bill spikes, income drops and a digital warning fires within 15 days.
How exactly does it work?
And also, this kind of early warning system is only half the story.
The real question is how to build a life worth staying for.
And does rural life necessarily mean poverty?
And does prosperity only about escaping?
So we'll dive into a lot of these discussions today on Roundtable and hello to Yusheng and Steve.
But first of all, I think we need to roll the tape backwards a little bit.
You know when we're talking about 98 million people out of absolute poverty in China is quite an achievement.
It is also a goal achieved.
10 years ahead of schedule, according to the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
That's very impressive.
But that goal, Yushun, wasn't done very easily, isn't it?
Yeah.
When we're tracing back to around like 2000, the number of people living in absolute poverty, also including low income populations, that's nearly around 95 million people are still struggling with poverty, heavily concentrated in the country's central and also western regions.
And then a major turning point came in 2013, when China introduced the concept of targeted poverty alleviation.
So, instead of broad-based assistance, the new approach focused on identifying specific households in need and providing tailored support.
And then, by 2015, the number of people living below the national poverty line had fallen to around 56 million.
That's already a big step.
And then, from 2015 to 2020, China entered the final stage, or final push, of its poverty eradication campaign.
Like, millions of people were lifted out of poverty each year through infrastructure development, education programs, also industrial support and social assistance.
And then That's what we know.
In 2020, China announced that our remaining rural residents living below the current national poverty line had been lifted out of poverty.
And it was done so many years ahead of schedule.
Yeah, yeah.
According to the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 10 years ahead of schedule.
Yeah.
And another thing I would like to mention is that, of course, we're talking about a lot of big numbers, the big achievements.
And poverty alleviation was, as its core, about people, about the people who live in these areas, in these regions.
It began with All of these smallest details of every day because that really touched me when I was searching on maybe some of the numbers that got increased in these years.
So a lot of these aspects that are focusing on or improving the things that matter mostly are are just ordinary things in these families.
By 2010, 88% of rural villages had road access, and then 98% had electricity.
92.9% had telephone services.
And around 88% of households had access to sanitary toilets.
That's actually one of the biggest improvements in a lot of regions, what we call toilet revolution.
Yeah.
They replaced all of these sanitary toilets.
And also...
By the end of 2010, the school enrollment rate for children aged 70 to 15 in key poverty alleviation counties had also reached 977, nearly matching the national average.
And also I think we kind of mentioned before our conversation starts.
At the same time, 914 of residents reported being able to receive timely medical treatment when they become ill.
And that's.
You know what's making.
You know, when it comes to poverty alleviation or any stories surrounding policies surrounding poverty, it sounds like an economic report because we will tell a lot of numbers you know how many people, how much money but it's very people-centered policy and stories.
It's a 100% people policy story.
Yeah, we throw out these numbers and it sounds like economic plans, but these numbers are individual human beings who have their own stories.
And that's why yes, it was a tremendous achievement for the country, 10 years ahead of schedule, to bring everyone out of poverty in the country 98 million people.
That's an astonishing achievement.
But it doesn't stop there.
And it didn't stop there for China.
Because when you bring those people above the poverty line, you want to make sure that they stay above the poverty line.
And there are dangers involved.
It's what economists call the poverty trap.
So I guess, in simple terms, it means that the conditions that escape, or sorry, the conditions that exist in people's lives, those conditions don't allow them to escape poverty or stay out of poverty.
I'll give you an example.
A low income family might not be able to afford quality education, for example, or health care, for example, or maybe some professional training.
So without education, or good health or professional training, well then, how are you supposed to find a good, stable job that would help you stay above that poverty line?
Without that support, then it's very easy to get stuck in that kind of situation.
And being stuck there is what, again, economists call the poverty trap.
Yeah.
And another thing is that you got stuck and the circumstance is probably the government or the policy is helping these regions, these people.
But they don't have maybe the mindset of I deserve a better quality of life.
And then maybe, of course, they received money and then they used the money.
And that's the end.
And they get back to the under the poverty line.
Yeah.
When economists talk about it, they say that there are a lot of overlapping problems.
Healthcare systems poor healthcare systems is one.
Weak infrastructure is another.
Limited access to credit from banks, for example, would be another.
Unemployment, environmental hardships.
Social inequality.
I mean, there's just a spider web of interconnected problems that can all and do all lead to this.
And so apparently poverty, the problem of poverty trap, has been troubled a lot of governments around the world, I guess.
And when it comes to China, we've spent decades of efforts, pouring a lot of monies, resources and talents into poverty alleviation.
Of course, we don't want to see the very precious achievement going back to poverty.
But then on the other hand, we talk about is a human-centered policy and system.
People change.
People's condition change.
People's surroundings also change.
So what is the Chinese government doing to make sure that these people who are just being lifted out of poverty don't fall back right into it?
There are several steps that the government is actually doing.
The first step in preventing people from falling back into poverty is building a comprehensive monitoring system that can identify risks early and also respond quickly.
So there are multiple channels for monitoring.
The system combines monitoring, Self-reporting by households, like regular visits, also regular visits by local officials, and data screening from government departments such as healthcare, education and civil affairs.
So this combination of human oversight and digital monitoring is designed to detect families' facing sudden hardships, such as illness, accidents or natural disasters, as early as possible, to prevent that.
And then there is a dynamic identification of at-risk households, because the monitoring system focuses on households that have recently escaped poverty but remain vulnerable than families living just above the poverty line and those experiencing severe unexpected difficulties.
So this kind of assessment is based not only on income, but also on key indicators such as access to compulsory education, basic health care, safe housing and clean drinking water.
Once identified,
Households are entered into a national database for ongoing monitoring and also support, and are removed from the system once the risk has passed.
And also one of the most interesting changes, because Yusheng just introduced a lot of linkage when it comes to building this kind of monitoring platform.
They need, of course, surveying, monitoring households.
And also they need to probably link to health care system, maybe to your weather forecast, because you also need to keep in mind if the natural disasters, for instance, could happen in this region.
And, very interestingly, one province in particular.
I think they use the digital infrastructure technology and big data systems to empower their monitoring platform.
That is in Guizhou.
Yeah, that's in the southwest part of the country right now.
This is an important region because, historically speaking, Guizhou is one or was one, excuse me, one of China's poorest provinces, and it accounted for about one-tenth of the country's formerly impoverished population.
Now, those numbers have drastically changed today, because it has also become one of China's fastest growing hubs for big data.
In the last few years, Guizhou built a province-wide digital monitoring platform.
And what that does is.
It covers rural residents all across the province and it integrates information from many different departments the health care department, agricultural authorities, public security systems and also civil affairs agencies.
Now the goal there is to identify warning signs before families officially fall back into poverty.
So for example, the system can detect a sudden spike in medical expenses.
It can detect major drops in household income.
It can detect housing problems or increasing education burdens.
So when the system gets flagged or notified, then the authorities get notified too.
And once those risks cross a certain threshold, Well then, there are automatic alerts that will allow the authorities to step in and offer assistance.
And that's the prevention part or prevention step.
And another step, I think, is targeted assistance.
So they have tailored support for every household.
Once a family is identified as being risked Being at risk, assistance is designed according to its specific circumstances.
And what we can see is that China continues to support the growth of local specialty industries in formerly impoverished regions, ranging from like fruit cultivation to traditional Chinese medicine herbs.
And by the end of 2025, all 832 formerly impoverished counties had developed two to three leading local industries, with nearly three quarters of formerly poor residents linked to these industries.
Industry through employment cooperatives or profit-sharing mechanisms, and more than 60 of central government transition funds are directed toward industrial development, while microloan programs helped farmers expand production.
And I think that is one of the key solutions for a lot of these regions, because you need to actually build up a whole industry for that region and make the whole region, I think, to have a sustainable future.
So that one thing is that the economy is getting developed.
Another thing is that they can actually attract people, attract young people, to stay in that county, so that it is not becoming what we call the hollow village and only maybe elderly people staying there.
You need to have the ability to keep the talent in the town and help them to have the good cycle of keep developing that county.
Yeah, because when we're talking about a lot of the supportive measures targeting people who are sort of on the borderline of poverty, they are sort of maybe a very severe sickness will send them back to poverty.
Of course, we have a safety net for them.
But when it comes to this kind of safety, it's only a safety net.
You know, it's not giving you future.
It's not giving you hope.
It just provides you with that guarantee that you are not falling back into poverty.
But when we're talking about giving people hope, giving people a future, I think these kind of experiences were also drawn from the past, when Yushun talked about the targeted poverty alleviation efforts.
They are going to different villages, going to different regions with a group of experts and they survey the region and see what kind of products, for example, could thrive here and then, building on this kind of product, what kind of industries can be the spillover industries that you can build here so that you can build your own economies and young people are likely to stay here and so you don't have to worry about financial.
It's a financial burden on any local governments to keep thousands of people always on the watch, providing them with that safety net.
But it's also a very delicate work.
Well, yes, of course.
And that's the ultimate goal, right?
And there are other regions around the world that are doing exactly the same thing.
I was reading this morning that in Nordic countries, In their rural areas, things like wind energy, sun energy they have the space for that.
So green renewables, they're building new things there to help support those communities.
They put the infrastructure there.
People work there.
It keeps young people from those communities working there.
It's the same types of things that we're talking about.
But until we get there, having a support system in place is just as important.
There was a quote from the head of the monitoring division at Guizhou's Department of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, talking about the philosophy that they're employing and the fact that it's quite simple.
Officials in the region.
They don't want to wait until a household has already fallen back into poverty.
They want to instead try to identify problems early and intervene early and solve problems early, instead of going back to the starting line and dealing with the same problems that they were dealing with before.
And to help make sure that that's happening, the region has strict timelines.
Officials are required to complete intervention within 15 days after an alert is triggered.
And these are really significant steps.
There's a story of a villager from Guizhou.
His name was Chen.
And this is what happened.
So one night Chen was awake in a hospital ward and he was worried about his sickness, of course, but he was also a pig farmer.
So he was worried about his pigs back home because the livestock was the family's main source of income.
Now the problem was there was nobody at home to feed them, because his wife was staying at the hospital to take care of him.
And I don't know how long he was in the hospital for, but the medical bills continued to mount and the family's income was expected to drop sharply.
So this is what happened.
Local officials and they talked about this later.
They explained that the household's annual per capita net income risked falling below 8500.
That's about $1,250.
Now, that's important because that's the threshold used to identify households that are vulnerable to returning to poverty.
Before the family had the chance to settle the hospital bills, local officials went to the hospital.
They arrived at the ward, and the reason was because of Guizhou's digital monitoring system.
The system had detected an abnormal increase in medical spending and it was automatically sent out a warning alert.
Very quickly, within a matter of days, village officials.
They verified the family situation.
Medical assistance was expedited.
Buyers were found for the pigs.
They went that far to help find buyers for the pigs.
Local authorities too.
They also began drafting longer term employment and development plans for the household.
And officials later said that without that surly intervention, the family easily could have slipped back into poverty simply because Mr Chen got sick for a few days.
And these are the types of stories that are that we're talking about here individuals with lives where just one thing, just just like that You can slip back.
And also you can see that, when it comes to this kind of strategy, it's not only a support system here in China, it's very customized.
That, for example, in Steve Chen, the pig farmer Chen story, They are thinking about his livestock.
They are thinking about his wife.
They are thinking about what's the future of his products, you know, the pigs.
Who are the buyers?
And when it comes to this kind of approach, it can also be expanded nationwide.
What many officials call one household growth, one profile approach, is basically also very similar to this one.
Because when you are talking about villages in China, yes, the Chinese cities are big.
Most of the time we're talking about millions of populations in one small city.
But when it comes to villages, some of the villages can be very small.
We're only talking about dozens of people living in that village in long term.
And so it won't be a very challenging task for the village officials to get to know everybody in that village.
What's challenging is, for example, the geography.
Maybe they're living in mountains.
They need to travel distance in the mountains.
That can be very challenging.
And also what challenging is?
You know, different people have different personalities.
It doesn't mean this village official can make a simple, one-size-fits-all approach to every household.
So that's why they need this kind of one household, one profile approach that basically combine digital technology what Steve just mentioned we have a flag system up there but also combined with these kind of officials making door to door visits to these households to make sure what really happened and also to see what kind of future specific problems these households could be facing.
Yeah, because every household faces different issues, of course.
Yes, there is one specific case, for example, from Hunan in central China.
There is a villager that found his family under severe pressure after his wife was suddenly hospitalized.
And even though they have medical insurance, the family still pays more than 20000 yuan, or more than 2800 US dollars, in debt.
So at the same time Xia, the farmer himself, was also in poor health and also lacked stable income sources.
So the family also supported a mentally disabled daughter and a grandson that are all still going to school.
So you can see the very intricate web of this family.
And that's why, for the local officials and the local governments, they need to find solutions to different problems, to Xi's family right.
And they certainly did.
Within a month, the family received a customized support package that was specifically designed for them.
It included medical assistance for the wife.
It included living subsidies for both his wife and grandson, educational support for the grandson, employment assistance for the younger daughter and incentives to develop small-scale courtyard farming at home.
It's really impressive how they can customize individual plans for the situation that the family happens to be experiencing.
And it's even more impressive how quickly they can do it.
Yeah.
And what we can see is that I think we're in that phase, that of understanding eliminating poverty was never the end of the story, because living standards improved and more people moved to cities in search of, maybe better opportunities.
Many rural communities began facing new challenges, which is fewer people.
And then examples like that, preventing and also, I think, also supporting these villages to develop their own industries is quite essential.
In some villages, young adults left for jobs elsewhere, also leaving behind mainly children and elderly residents.
And recognizing these kind of challenges, China has shifted its focus from solely the poverty alleviation to rural revitalization.
You're talking about the gap, the rural urban gap.
Exactly.
The goal is no longer just simply to help people escape poverty, but to create communities where people want to stay and want to work and to grow old with dignity.
So what I can see is that a lot of examples are showing that developing local specialty industry as I mentioned that before and also attracting talent back to rural areas is widely seen as one of the most effective ways to address rural depopulation.
I saw that in Xiaomiaozi village in Inner Mongolia, residents established a cooperative to cultivate traditional Chinese medicine herbs and also expand the local value chain, creating jobs close to home.
And also in Dongjia Village in Shandong Province.
A successful entrepreneur returned to his hometown and invested in a modern ag production farm, helping revitalize underused land while generating new employment opportunities for local residents.
So I think it is kind of wing wing situation, but of course cause a lot of effort and also fun and patience, sometimes even.
And also when it comes to when we're talking about rural areas, no matter if it's here in China or elsewhere in the world.
I think most of our stereotype is rural areas are most of the time underdeveloped, can be a little primitive, having a lot of agricultural products, a lot of greens, a lot of trees, a lot of crops.
Yes, that's true.
But also, on the other hand, we are having that idea is that they have lack of connectivity compared to an urban city, meaning they probably don't have a lot of technology.
When it comes to AI technology, for instance.
That's not the place that we want to talk about in a village in the middle of nowhere.
But I think what the future for well?
In China we have more than 450 million people still living in villages, in rural areas.
And we want to change this kind of stereotype. that villages don't necessarily mean that they are low-tech, that not necessarily mean they don't have a lot of connectivity, and also not necessarily mean they are less developed compared to a city nearby.
But how to make that happen I think can be a very major issue.
So maybe for now that one of the key focus is to expand industries in these rural villages.
One example is that, as Steve said, once considered as the one of the poorest regions, Guizhou, now it is definitely China's computing power center.
It has a lot of cloud computing companies and I think plans and everything in that region.
And they are actually supporting a lot of the whole country's computing power.
Another, more smaller example that I feel really, really connected to is a small county in Shizan called Motuo.
It's a border town.
And it is the last, I think it's the last county in China that's connected to the road system.
The road was finished in 2013.
Oh, and that was the last one is the last one simply because it leaves sort of very geographically difficult region that took China probably four to five decades to finish building that section of road.
And then in Motuo, there used to be this, I don't know how to call that, that people need to work as porters, that because they don't have roads, so if the villagers want to buy anything that's not locally produced,
They need to hire somebody to carry that thing into that village.
I think there used to be one documentary about a porter carrying a refrigerator in the mountains from the city to the county of Muotuo, because some family needs a refrigerator.
And that's how challenging the situation is.
And recently there is a show on TV called Become a Farmer and that they went to this Motua County and interviewed a lot of villagers.
And one villager said, you know, for us, Porter is not a job.
It's a fate.
It's our fate.
And it took me a few days to really understand what do you mean by Porter is not a job.
And then I realized for local residents in Motuo, Being a porter is not a job, meaning you can't quit.
It's not like us, I'm not happy today at this job, then I quit, I leave.
I find a new one, I find one that I love.
But for them, you have to do that.
You don't have a choice.
It's a village of people depending on.
Yeah, it's your fate, because if you don't do this, if you don't carry that refrigerator into the village, then that means you don't have that access to the equipment.
And I think now these villagers are.
Of course I don't think few people are still being a porter in that village because now they have roads.
It's not necessary.
Yes.
And now they are able to say that, you know what, I finally don't have to be a porter.
I finally have a choice that I can hire a truck. ship that refrigerator right to my doorstep.
And I think when it comes to this kind of expanding the rural industries, and then Motuo have other industries, like the tea industry in Motuo is very, very famous.
And also they grow apples and bananas.
And that is why the villagers, now they start to see hope, start to see smiles, start to have their own vision of what their future could like.
And it's stuff that we take for granted every day.
And these are big changes for people who live in those communities.
And now that's the goal for China.
It's not just about... helping people get above the poverty line.
That amazing goal has already been accomplished years ago.
Now it's about building rural communities that are strong and resilient, that have sustainable industries and better public services and access to grocery stores and hospitals or clinics.
That can build a strong local economy.
And of course, that's not something that's done overnight, because this is a huge country and there are tons and tons and tons of villages out there and not every village can be built on the same industry, right.
Some might thrive on tourism, some might thrive on agriculture.
It's like you said before, Feifei, you know, every painting is different.
So strategies need to be different.
But that is now the direction that the country is headed towards and those communities should feel very good about that.
Yeah.
And also speaking of connectivity and sustainability.
There is actually a quite fascinating phenomenon in China today.
I realized that people from certain regions can travel to places like Xinjiang Xizang, Guizhou and other destinations and also receive free admission to some tourist attractions.
And you may wonder why, because they don't belong to that area.
At first, I also found it quite puzzling.
Why would a scenic site offer free entry specifically to visitors from one particular region, while everyone else still has to pay it and also buy a ticket?
And then I learned that these policies are often connected to China's paired assistance programs.
Because in many cases, a more developed province or city has spent years providing targeted support to a less developed region through investment, infrastructure projects education, health care or poverty alleviation initiatives.
So this isn't just done on a national level, which it is, but it's not just that.
It's done maybe province to province.
Yes.
And then as a gesture of appreciation and to strengthen those ties, some tourist attractions offer free or discounted admission to residents from the partner region.
And I think it's a quite small detail, but sometimes even, you know, people are getting used to it.
Like they're just telling people, now you can get free tickets if you are a people from that region.
And it is quite interesting, the relationship between these regions isn't just administrative or economic, because over time it has evolved into a lasting connection that people can actually experience it every day, even something as simple as just visiting a tourist attraction.
Yeah, we have a lot of such pairs, for example, Xizang and Guangdong, for example Xinjiang and Jiangsu.
And for my hometown in Mongolia.
They have different partners, for example with the city of Beijing as well.
And yes, as Yushun said, it's not only economical, it's not only about policy, but also about people-to-people exchange.
And that is how the whole country is.
When it comes to poverty alleviation, when it comes to building a prosperous future, it's a whole country's effort that needs everybody taking part in.
