After an eight-year nationwide campaign, China achieved a complete victory in its fight against extreme poverty by the end of 2020, which aims "not just eradicating poverty, but making sure that it never ever comes back", Colombian vlogger Fernando Munoz Bernal shared.
Having lived in China for more than two decades, Bernal has ridden and driven across the country over the past four years, covering more than 150,000 kilometers. Journeying through cities and villages, he has witnessed a steadily improving social security system and gained a deeper understanding of China's poverty alleviation policies.
China's approach to poverty alleviation, he said, goes beyond setting a static income line for underprivileged groups; it weaves a comprehensive social system to meet all their basic needs.
"By the end of 2020, nearly 100 million rural villagers living on less than about 4,000 yuan (about 586 U.S. dollars) a year crossed a threshold. Not just an income line, but a full set of guarantees, food, clothing, schools, healthcare and safe housing," he said.
This achievement was not a sudden leap, he noted, but the fruit of more than four decades of effort, with the country's poverty benchmark continuously being upgraded. The earliest standard, set in 1978, addressed basic survival by ensuring a minimum daily calorie intake; the 2010 standard of "two assurances and three guarantees" stipulated adequate food and clothing, plus access to education, medical care and safe housing, stressing not only a static income figure but people's fundamental needs.
Beyond these policies, Bernal highlighted that one of the most important lessons from China's experience is its constant effort to prevent relapse, embodied in the Rural Poverty Prevention Mechanism.
"The scale is staggering. Between 1981 and 2020, China lifted 800 million people out of poverty. That is more than the entire population of Europe. But eradicating absolute poverty is not the end. The fact is poverty can always return through illness or a bad harvest, or job loss. So, this is why after 2020, China built the Rural Poverty Prevention Mechanism," he said.
"It is a real time safety net. It tracks three kinds of households, those who escaped poverty but remain unstable, those that are just above the line, and families that are hit by sudden disaster or disease. Once identified, each household gets a custom plan which includes job training for those who are able bodied, subsidies for those who are vulnerable, and for those who cannot work, then the rural subsistence allowance kicks in. By the end of June 2025, this mechanism helped over 6.8 million people permanently move out of danger," he further introduced.
With stricter standards, dynamic monitoring, and a static living standard that covers people's basic needs, China's poverty alleviation campaign has responded to doubts with concrete achievements, Bernal said.
"So when people in the West ask, is China's poverty standard stricter, dynamic, or static, the answer is actually all three. The income anchor is static, so the progress can be measured. Now the guarantees are stricter because poverty is about much more than just money. And the system is dynamic because it is constantly monitoring and preventing relapse," he said.
Colombian vlogger shares observations on China's poverty alleviation after traveling across country
