Female college graduates serving as village officials take a break in a field in Sihong county, Suqian, Jiangsu province, on July 24, 2013. [Photo by Li Ge/For China Daily]

Since China launched its reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, the country has carried out large-scale poverty alleviation, embarking on the most spectacular poverty reduction campaign in human history. According to World Bank figures, 850 million people have been lifted out of poverty since the reform and opening-up began. After seven years of targeted efforts, the number of poverty-stricken counties in China dropped from 832 to 52 as of the end of 2019.

The poverty-stricken population dropped from 98.99 million at the end of 2012 to 5.51 million at the end of 2019, representing a drop in the poverty rate of the population from 10.2 percent to 0.6 percent over the same period.