China Wants its Anti-Poverty Efforts to be the World Model

China is promoting its poverty alleviation program as a model for world. Today the "Global South Modernization Forum" was held in Beijing where 60 poverty alleviation scholars from China and abroad praised China's approach to poverty reduction. China considers itself to be a leader of the "Global South," a label for developing countries used by the UN and some other international organizations.  The forum was featured in multiple Chinese State media outlets such as China Daily. Xinhua and China Daily posted articles about the forum on Facebook and Youtube, platforms that are banned in China.

Xinhua featured a speech to the foum by the head of the Communist Party's propaganda department.

A seminar on "China's Poverty Alleviation and the Global South's Poverty Reduction Efforts" focused on "the global significance of China's victory in the battle against poverty." The description in Chinese news media included the Chinese regime's usual stock phrases: "building a community with a shared future for mankind" free from poverty and with common development. China wants to "share its experience in poverty reduction," "deepen cooperation among the Global South," and "jointly address global challenges in poverty reduction and sustainable development," and work together to implement the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

According to State media, "guests" gave Xi Jinping accolades for his leadership in "winning the war on poverty" and consolidating its achievements in development that is "people centered," "equitable," and "inclusive."

"Guests" were probably shown pretty pictures of neatly planned model villages while speaking only in the abstract about aging rural people with no pension and no children to care for them, "hollow villages," "cooperatives" that are fronts for companies, piles of trash, insolvent rural banks, closed rural schools, and nutritional deficits.

News articles did not mention that Chinese government officials have been under orders to prevent rural regions from regressing into poverty over the last two years. 

The forum probably did not include any discussion of recent unrest in Hainan where farmers were enraged that a rubber company claiming ownership of their land pulled up betel nut trees they had planted. 

A Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs attended the meeting, but Minister Han Jun apparently did not. Last week Minister Han was in Gansu Province investigating results of antipoverty efforts from potato and beef cattle industry development strategies. The article on Han's visit hailed the results of a Dingxi County potato project but did not mention that funds and work effort have been poured into this county's potato project for 20 years. Han also investigated Kangle County's beef industry development project. After antipoverty efforts gave loans to pork, dairy and beef companies to set up operations in impoverished areas these sectors have been coping with excess supply, depressed prices and losses. Last year the agriculture ministry held a meeting to discuss rescue efforts for the beef and dairy industries. This year all hog producers are losing money except indebted behemoth companies Muyuan and Wens who claim to have cut production costs.

There was probably no mention of rural families who are deep in debt because they bought apartments in county towns before the property market imploded.

Not visible from Beijing conference room.