Erik Robert Nilsson

U.S.
 

Senior Reporter of the Culture and Education Department of China Daily

 

The greatest thing about having made three such trips through Tibet since 2016 is witnessing the progress that Tibet has made in overall quality of life and especially in poverty alleviation, which is a major advancement in the region’s human rights.

 

The government has implemented 2,900 poverty alleviation projects in Tibet since my first visit in 2016, bringing nearly 230,000 people out of poverty and benefiting over 840,000 others.

 

However, while the world recognizes the miracle that China has achieved in terms of poverty alleviation and what this means for human well-being in general, many people, especially in the West, fail to recognize China’s “complete victory” over extreme poverty is specifically an advancement of human rights at all, let alone as an unprecedented milestone of human rights advancement in human history.

 

That is largely because much of the developed world has achieved subsistence and development sufficiently long ago that it arguably takes these for granted today.