On November 15, 2021, the Global Asia Research Center of Waseda University hosted a postgraduate workshop entitled “Moving Forward from Targeted Poverty Alleviation: China’s Exploration to Achieve Sustainable Rural Development.” Pan Jiawei, a doctral student at the University of London, delivered a presentation.

The presentation began with the introduction of the United Nations’ (UN) concern about global poverty, quoting from Mr. Pan, “in all forms and dimensions, is one of the greatest global challenges that cause devastating socio-economic impacts and impedes the world from achieving sustainable development.” Mr. Pan contextualized the problem of poverty into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals strategy and focused on a village in Anhui province, China, as his case study. The case study represented China’s new anti-poverty policy called the ‘Targeted Poverty Alleviation’ (TPA) scheme. Mr. Pan’s research analyzed TPA’s implementation on the local level, which could be mirrored outwards to discuss its impacts on the country’s sustainability and prosperity.

After the first initiative in 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Government of China implemented the TPA policy two years later as an acknowledgment of the pressing need to address poverty and its related issues. By its original plan, the TPA policy hoped to elevate 70 million ‘real poor’ rural populations out of poverty by 2020. To date, more than 90 million have overcome poverty.

In this presentation, Mr. Pan shared extensive data surveys and materials from the village in Anhui province to support his argument. Despite some inherent weaknesses, the TPA scheme turned out to be effective. Due to this policy, the growing number of Chinese peasants has come to enjoy substantive benefits. In this sense, the TPA scheme and its subsequent measures are conceived of as important tools for the CCP and the Chinese government to bring its people changes and prosperity.

After some comprehensive discussions of TPA’s strengths and weaknesses, Mr. Pan showed his positive view on the continuation of TPA policy. However, he concluded that, regardless of the accomplishments and more ongoing efforts, the remaining problems were still challenging; and China’s ability to address these issues were critical in determining how far China could go to attain its goal regarding sustainable rural development.