economy - China’s successful struggle against poverty

The World Bank has produced a useful paper on China’s successful, but rather uneven, struggle against poverty, a very useful contribution now poverty relieve in Africa is high on the agenda. (Tip from Simon World).
Between 1981 and 2001 the percentage of the poor in China dropped from 53 percent to 8 percent, a remarkable achievement. But the process has been uneven, both in time and varies greatly between provinces.

“… there were many setbacks for the poor. Poverty reduction stalled in the late 1980s and early 1990s, recovered pace in the mid-1990s, but stalled again in the late 1990s. Half of the decline came in the first few years of the 1980s.”

Some more conclusions: the bulk of poverty relief came from within rural areas not urban areas. Without the current inequality in development the number of poor could have been 1.5 percent in stead of the current 8 percent. Certainly worth a glance at this effort the complicate some of the existing clichés about China.