Poverty alleviation efforts must foster self-reliance

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recently announced that Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their outstanding contributions to the research into the "daunting issue" of global poverty.

In terms of poverty alleviation studies, I have always believed that economics is a "science that benefits the people", and China's practical achievements in poverty alleviation are unparalleled. Not to mention that the country has left behind the economic poverty and educational and cultural backwardness that existed in the early days after the people's republic was founded in 1949. Even in 1978, when the reform and opening-up policy was initiated, China's impoverished population in rural areas was about 250 million under the 1978 poverty threshold, with a poverty rate of 30.7 percent.

According to the 2008 standard, there were still 40.7 million rural people living in poverty in China in 2008, with the figure falling to 26.88 million by 2010. Based on the 2010 poverty standard, namely 2,300 yuan (2010 constant price) per person per year, by 2018 the number had dropped to 16.6 million.