Extreme poverty has been defeated in China - President Xi Jinping declares

 

Chinese President, Xi Jinping has announced that his country has achieved the "miracle" of eradicating extreme poverty.

According to Xi,  over an eight-year period, nearly 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty due to the nation's aggressive economic policies.

Speaking at a ceremony in Beijing on Thursday, February 25, Mr Xi said it was a

"complete victory" that would "go down in history".
Xi said the "arduous task of eradicating extreme poverty has been fulfilled".

"We have achieved the miracle of eradicating extreme poverty.

"According to the current criteria, all 98.99 million poor rural population have been taken out of poverty, and 832 poverty-stricken counties as well as 128,000 villages have been removed from the poverty list," he said.

China announced late last year that it had removed the last remaining counties from a list of poor regions, which officials said meant it had achieved the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the end of 2020.

But some economic experts have questioned the way China has measured 'extreme poverty'

In China, extreme poverty is defined as earning less than $620 (£440) a year.

The threshold set by China to define extreme poverty amounts to $1.69 a day at current exchange rates, compared to the World Bank's global threshold of $1.90, Reuters news agency reports.