Facing reporters at his home An tightly controlled annual press conference at the end of the NPC, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang acknowledged that some Chinese citizens had been impoverished by the pandemic.

“Before Covid-19 hit, there were around five million people living below the poverty line. But because of this disease, some may have fallen back into poverty,” Li said. “Because of this, we now face a greater task in fulfilling our goals.”

Experts say Xi’s opportunity to achieve his big goal depends largely on whether Beijing can get the country back to work quickly.

“As long as work continues to recover or most recover at the end of the year, they will approach their poverty targets,” said Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Stanford University Rural Education Action Program.

“[But] there are only many things that say this will be a constant problem. “

A giant business

For most of the 20th century, China was one of the poorest countries in the world.

Since then, that number has declined rapidly. In 2012 the Chinese government announced that there were 115 million people living in absolute poverty. With less than 10 million left in poverty at the end of last year, it emerged that China is on the step to achieving its goals.

Shenjing He, a professor at Hong Kong University who studies urban poverty, said that although there were only a few people left in absolute poverty, they were among the most severely affected.

“They are people who really suffer because of the problem of poverty,” he said. “They live in very bad conditions and are usually located in mountainous areas and very remote places.”

He, a Hong Kong professor, said the Chinese government had assigned domestic scientific bodies to monitor its progress in poverty alleviation by 2020, to ensure its goals were achieved in “a very important year.”

But according to my colleagues in China, they don’t think there is a big problem for the government to fulfill this commitment, “he said.

Millions of people are unemployed

Independent experts say getting an accurate picture of rural poverty on the ground is difficult, partly because of the large size of China and partly because of the secrecy of its government, especially under the increasingly authoritarian and opaque Xi government.

But there are already indications that China’s poor may have been hit by the coronavirus economic crisis.

However, the official figures do not include people in rural communities or a large number of 290 million migrant workers who work in construction, manufacturing and other important but underpaid activities.

‘Perfect storm’

“The work of rural workers is basically zero for a whole month after quarantine begins,” the report said.

Half of the villages surveyed by the Stanford University team reported an average loss of around $ 281 to $ 704 (2,000 to 5,000 yuan) in March.

To cope with the overwhelming income, “half of them have reduced nutrition and food diversity – they have switched to wheat and vegetable diets rather than meat and fruit,” said Rozelle of REAP, who wrote this research. “They already are also reduce spending on their children’s education and spending on non-Covid health problems. “

Some CAAS estimates found that farmers’ salaries could fall by up to 40%.

To make matters worse for some rural communities, parts of China have witnessed the worst flooding in decades in June, just as they began to recover from coronavirus.

According to state media, tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed along the Yangtze River and at least 12 million people were affected, causing an economy of around $ 3.6 billion.

John Donaldson, poverty expert and associate professor at Singapore Management University, said that in many ways coronaviruses have become a “perfect storm” for people living in poverty in China, affecting many different sectors at the same time.

“The plant is still not operating at full power, partly because of fear of the corona virus, you have construction [being put on hold]”Even hotels that buy a lot of food from the countryside are low in business,” he said.

In addition, Donaldson said that local officials responsible for police poverty alleviation have been troubled by their struggle against the corona virus.

Message

Despite the setbacks, the ruling Communist Party and government-run media have run joint campaigns to convince their domestic audiences that they will meet their targets.

In early June, Xi traveled to the northern province of Ningxia to visit families and observe a workshop, built with a poverty alleviation fund, where villagers produce cartons.

Experts generally agree that it is very unlikely that the Chinese government will announce that it has lost its target of poverty alleviation by the end of 2020. Donaldson said that the target is likely to be met or they will be sufficiently fudged to say they have met.

But there are fears that even if Beijing fulfills its goal of eliminating absolute poverty by the end of this year, there is still a long way to go to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of its citizens.

For years, Xi has claimed China to be “a fairly prosperous society.”

However, speaking at his press conference in May, Li said that there were still 600 million people – around 40% of the population – living on a monthly income of only about $ 140 (1,000 yuan).

“It’s not even enough to rent a room in a medium-sized Chinese city,” Li said.

Donaldson said that his biggest concern was that once the Chinese government announced it had eradicated absolute poverty, local governments could stop considering all poverty as an important issue, regardless millions of people who still need urgent help.

“I mean, that’s the bottom part line: If poverty is eliminated, how many poor people after this campaign? Nobody will know, “he said.