A total of 2.74 million impoverished families saw their income increased thanks to e-commerce poverty relief programs in the past five years, and 23,000 impoverished villages have benefited from tourism programs.

 

Nevertheless, in the eyes of Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, the poverty relief task was still arduous.

 

The work will shift to areas hit the hardest by poverty, put more emphasis on quality, and be more targeted and precise, Liu said. "We will work to foster local industries, create new jobs, relocate residents in poor areas...and strengthen aid to the aged, the disabled and people who are seriously ill."

 

 

The achievements China has made in poverty alleviation have not only helped the development of its own human rights endeavor, but also greatly contributed to that of the international community with Chinese wisdom and solutions, and has been lauded globally.

 

China has realized "the most rapid large-scale poverty reduction in human history over the last 25 years," said a 2016 World Bank document, which was released after the World Bank's one-year research of worldwide poverty reduction efforts in partnership with the Chinese government.

 

"We should not forget the fact that China has contributed the most in world poverty alleviation in the past decade," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last year about China's poverty reduction achievements.

 

William Jones, Washington bureau chief of the Executive Intelligence Review news magazine, said ending poverty had long been regarded a major task for humanity, but until recently was seen as a "utopian dream."

 

"With China, that dream is now becoming a reality," he said.