Harvesting fruits of poverty alleviation

As a journalist who has chronicled China's poverty alleviation efforts for years, I know the statistics of that impressive achievement by heart: 98.99 million impoverished rural residents lifted out of absolute poverty, 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages removed from the poverty list, and the United Nations 2030 Agenda's poverty goal reached a decade early.

But reading about poverty alleviation is one thing and witnessing it firsthand is quite another. I spent three months in China this year, traveling through its cities, villages, provinces and autonomous regions. What I saw in four villages in different parts of the country was an eye-opener. I saw what the poverty-reduction numbers truly mean, and was deeply impressed by the leadership that made it possible.

My first stop was Baihang village in Fuyang, Anhui province. For decades, it was among the poorer parts of China, a place young people left in search of work. But Baihang shows no sign of that impoverished past. The roads are paved, houses are well-kept and families are confident about their children's future.

Anhui's "one product per village" strategy has helped communities across Fuyang develop industries based on their unique strengths. Baihang's lesson is clear: China's poverty alleviation is not charity from above but a deliberate effort to help every village find its path to prosperity.

Simola, a 500-year-old village of the Wa ethnic group near the ancient Southern Silk Road, lives up to its name which means "a place of happiness".

Once characterized by mud roads, unreliable electricity and lack of clean water, Simola shook off extreme poverty by 2020.

In January 2020, President Xi Jinping visited the village, joined villagers in beating the traditional Wa wooden drum, and emphasized that escaping poverty was just the starting point of a better life.

Inspired by his words, the villagers formed a tourism cooperative, revived Wa crafts and festivals, and built a cultural exhibition hall. In 2025, Simola welcomed 631,000 tourist visits and generated over 15 million yuan ($2.2 million) in total tourism revenue. Young people who once left the village to search for work are now returning home. The culture of this ethnic minority community has become the driving force of development.

In the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, near the Vietnamese border, Buhua village is nestled among sugarcane fields and dramatic karst peaks along the Heishui River.

Once reliant only on farming, the village now boasts the Zaiye Suji homestay cluster, with its mushroom-shaped rooftops blending into the landscape.

Visitors come to press sugarcane juice, paddle on the river and learn Zhuang tie-dyeing from local artisans.

The natural beauty of the place and the Zhuang heritage, which once symbolized remoteness, have become the village's greatest assets.

Families that once depended on a single crop now have many sources of income. It is rural revitalization in its truest form.

The transformation of Gala village, high on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, was most striking. The region is home to over a thousand ancient wild peach trees.

Xizang, once one of the poorest regions in China, lifted all 628,000 registered impoverished residents out of poverty by the end of 2019.

Gala village's success is partly due to the paired assistance program with Guangdong province, which helped the village build a thriving peach blossom tourism economy.

With paved roads, a visitor center, modern sanitation and trails through the peach forest, villagers now earn from homestays, transport, fruit picking and festival dividends.

When Xi visited Gala village in 2021, he described the peach forest as a blessing left by the ancestors.

To be sure, the blessing had always been there. What was needed was a leadership with the vision to unlock its potential, and a system in which one of China's richest provinces takes personal responsibility for the prosperity of a village thousands of kilometers away.

No other country in the world practices such solidarity.

What unites these four villages, despite their geographical, linguistic and cultural differences? The answer is clear in the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China. In November 2013, in the village of Shibadong in Hunan, Xi introduced "targeted poverty alleviation".

The idea was to identify every poor household, understand the specific causes of its poverty and design a tailored solution. The model was a bold break from broad one-size-fits-all subsidies.

The Party turned that vision into reality on an unprecedented scale, deploying more than 3 million members and officials to live and work in poor villages as first secretaries and resident task force members. More than 1,800 sacrificed their lives in this mission.

No other political organization globally has mobilized its members so comprehensively to serve its poorest citizens. The Party's ability to set long-term goals, coordinate all levels of government and hold officials accountable for results is what helped China succeed where so many others have failed.

Looking at the transformation, I couldn't help but reflect on my homeland. Much of rural Pakistan faces the very challenges these villages once did: poor connectivity, dependence on a single crop, young people leaving for cities, and rich cultural traditions that earn nothing.

Through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, our two countries have built roads, power plants and ports together.

The next chapter of our all-weather strategic cooperative partnership should be sharing China's experience in poverty reduction: paired assistance between developed and underdeveloped regions, precise identification of the poor, a village-by-village focus on local industries, and preserving culture as an economic asset.

China's victory over extreme poverty is the greatest contribution to global poverty reduction in human history.

It proves that no nation is destined to remain poor. What I witnessed in these four villages was the fruit of the Party's dedication, and the tireless work of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

The Global South has much to learn from this remarkable achievement.

The author is the executive editor of Pakistan Economic Network and Daily Ittehad Media Group.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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