Across three months of travel through China's cities, provinces and villages, a Pakistani editor set out to see whether the familiar national statistics of poverty relief held up in actual places. In four villages, from the hills of Anhui to the Guangxi border and the high plateau, he found roads, cooperatives and tourism where scarcity had once been the rule, and he attributes this change to the leadership of the Communist Party and to a targeted approach that began over a decade ago. Published in China Daily as an opinion essay, his account is one observer's testimony, carrying a promotional
Four Villages, One Model: A Pakistani Editor's Firsthand Account of China's Poverty Alleviation
Reading about poverty alleviation is one thing; witnessing it is another.
Mark
Why does a Pakistani editor's account matter here?
Mimi
He ties what he saw to Pakistan's own rural problems: single-crop farming, young people leaving, culture that earns nothing. His argument is that these villages offer a template.
Mark
What did the four villages have in common?
Mimi
Each turned a local asset into income. Baihang built local products, Simola its Wa culture, Buhua its scenery and Zhuang crafts, and Gala its peach forest.
Luke
Before we go further: this is an opinion piece in China Daily, and it says so. The national figures are official ones, not verified by the author.
Mark
What about the village numbers?
Luke
Simola's 631,000 visits and 15 million yuan are given without a source. Baihang and Buhua get no figures at all, just impressions.
Mimi
He does describe specific things: paved roads, the homestay cluster, the visitor center, the festival dividends.
Luke
Fair, but he saw four villages in three months. We don't know how they were chosen or who guided him.
Mark
And the claim that no other country does this?
Luke
That's a judgment, not a finding. The piece offers no comparison to support it.
Mimi
What's concrete is the proposal: paired assistance, precise identification of the poor, and local industry, offered to Pakistan through the existing corridor partnership.
O Pulso
- A village that once lost its young to distant cities now watches them return, drawn by tourist crowds and revived traditions.
- Families that depended on a single crop are scrambling to build several streams of income, from homestays to sugarcane juice and tie-dye.
- Officials and Party members have been dispatched to poor villages, with the author noting that more than 1,800 of them died in the effort.
- The approach is being pressed forward through paired assistance, precise household identification and local industries, with the author urging Pakistan and the Global South to follow.
- The claims remain the author's own assessment drawn from four visits, and the broader outcomes are presented without independent verification here.
Across three months of travel through China's cities, provinces and villages, a Pakistani editor set out to see whether the familiar national statistics of poverty relief held up in actual places. In four villages, from the hills of Anhui to the Guangxi border and the high plateau, he found roads, cooperatives and tourism where scarcity had once been the rule, and he attributes this change to the leadership of the Communist Party and to a targeted approach that began over a decade ago. Published in China Daily as an opinion essay, his account is one observer's testimony, carrying a promotional tone and claims that rest largely on his own assessment. It asks readers to consider what the villages might teach a rural Pakistan facing many of the same struggles.
A Pakistani editor who had long covered China's poverty campaign spent three months traveling through the country, and he wrote about what four villages showed him. He begins with the official figures: 98.99 million people lifted out of absolute poverty, 832 counties removed from the list, and the UN 2030 poverty goal reached early. The numbers, he says, become real only on the ground.
In Baihang village in Anhui, a place where young people once left to find work, he finds paved roads and families hopeful about their children. He credits the province's "one product per village" strategy, which lets communities build on their own strengths.
Simola, a 500-year-old Wa village, once had mud roads and no clean water. After President Xi Jinping visited in 2020 and joined villagers in drumming, residents formed a tourism cooperative, revived crafts and festivals, and opened a cultural exhibition hall. In 2025 the village drew 631,000 visitors, and the author notes that those who had left are coming back.
In Buhua, in Guangxi, a farming village now hosts a cluster of homestays where visitors press sugarcane juice, paddle the river and learn tie-dyeing. Families that once relied on one crop now have many sources of income. Gala, on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, struck him most. Its ancient wild peach forest now draws visitors, supported partly by a paired assistance program with Guangdong, and villagers earn from homestays, transport and fruit picking.
The author argues that the Party's leadership ties these places together, tracing the method to Xi's 2013 call for targeted poverty alleviation, which sought to identify every poor household and design a tailored remedy. He notes the Party sent millions of members to live in poor villages, and that many died doing so. He then turns to Pakistan, where similar problems persist, and urges shared poverty-reduction methods alongside the infrastructure built through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. These are his own assessments, drawn from visits to four villages.
Over three months this year, a Pakistani editor traveled through Chinese cities, villages, provinces and autonomous regions. He had long covered China's poverty alleviation campaign and knew the headline figures by heart. Four villages, he writes in an opinion piece for China Daily, showed him what those figures look like on the ground. The author is the executive editor of Pakistan Economic Network and Daily Ittehad Media Group, and the piece carries the standard note that its views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
The figures he starts from are official ones: 98.99 million rural residents lifted out of absolute poverty, 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages removed from the poverty list, and the poverty goal of the UN 2030 Agenda reached a decade early.
His first stop was Baihang village in Fuyang, Anhui province, long among the poorer areas and a place young people left to find work. He describes paved roads, well-kept houses and families confident about their children's future. He credits Anhui's "one product per village" strategy, which has helped communities in Fuyang build industries around their particular strengths.
Simola, a 500-year-old village of the Wa ethnic group near the ancient Southern Silk Road, once had mud roads, unreliable electricity and no clean water. It escaped extreme poverty by 2020. In January of that year, President Xi Jinping visited, joined villagers in beating the traditional Wa wooden drum, and said that leaving poverty was only the starting point of a better life. Villagers then formed a tourism cooperative, revived Wa crafts and festivals, and built a cultural exhibition hall. In 2025 the village recorded 631,000 tourist visits and more than 15 million yuan (about $2.2 million) in total tourism revenue. The author says young people who left are returning.
In Buhua village, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region near the Vietnamese border, sugarcane fields and karst peaks line the Heishui River. A village that once relied on farming alone now has the Zaiye Suji homestay cluster, with mushroom-shaped rooftops. Visitors press sugarcane juice, paddle the river and learn Zhuang tie-dyeing from local artisans. Families that depended on one crop now have several sources of income.
Gala village, high on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, struck him most. The area holds more than a thousand ancient wild peach trees. Xizang lifted all 628,000 of its registered impoverished residents out of poverty by the end of 2019. The author attributes Gala's peach blossom tourism economy partly to a paired assistance program with Guangdong province. With paved roads, a visitor center, modern sanitation and trails through the forest, villagers earn from homestays, transport, fruit picking and festival dividends. When Xi visited in 2021, he called the peach forest a blessing left by the ancestors.
The author argues that what links the four places is the leadership of the Communist Party of China. He traces the approach to November 2013, when Xi introduced "targeted poverty alleviation" in Shibadong village, Hunan: identify every poor household, find the specific causes of its poverty, and design a tailored remedy, rather than relying on broad subsidies. He says the Party sent more than 3 million members and officials to live and work in poor villages as first secretaries and task force members, and that more than 1,800 of them died in the effort.
He then turns to home. Much of rural Pakistan, he writes, faces what these villages once did: poor connectivity, dependence on a single crop, youth leaving for cities, and cultural traditions that earn nothing. Having built roads, power plants and ports together through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, he says, the two countries should next share poverty-reduction methods: paired assistance between richer and poorer regions, precise identification of the poor, village-level local industries, and culture as an economic asset. He calls China's result the greatest contribution to global poverty reduction in history and says the Global South has much to learn from it. These are the author's own assessments, drawn from a visit to four villages.
Citações Notáveis
China's victory over extreme poverty is the greatest contribution to global poverty reduction in human history.— Op-ed author, executive editor of Pakistan Economic Network and Daily Ittehad Media Group
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