Rural Poverty Alleviation in China: Recent Reforms and Challenges

The "13th Five-Year Outline Plan" (2016-2020) has poverty alleviation as one of the major tasks for the Chinese government. Two sets of policies have been underlined: poverty alleviation (jinzhun fupin) plan to improve the targeting accuracy of these programmes and policies to focus on adjacent regions with disadvantaged natural and economic conditions. However, the efficacy of these programmes has been saddled with issues including low government capacity and the difficulties to mobilise the private sector.