  
Yang Canming
  President of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Director of IIDPF
  During its century-long journey, the Chinese Communist Party has made many historic achievements through difficult exploration and continuous innovation. Among these are a series of innovations around the issue of poverty reduction, which can be summarised in the following areas:
  1. Marx and Engels mainly studied the poverty of the proletariat under capitalist conditions, focusing on the working class. The Russian revolution under Lenin also took place mainly in the big cities and the focus remained on the working class. The Chinese Communists, mainly represented by Mao Zedong, combined the universal truths of Marxism with the concrete reality of the Chinese revolution and opened up the path of encircling the countryside and seizing power with arms. Therefore, in the fight against poverty, the Chinese Communist Party was not only concerned with the fate of the urban working class, but also with the reality that China was still primarily an agrarian society at the time, and made the land revolution and rural poverty reduction a top priority. The main masterpieces include Mao Zedong's Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, Report on the Inspection of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, The Land Law of Jinggang Mountain and A Single Spark Can Start a Huge Blaze.
  2. The Chinese Communist Party adheres to the basic Marxist principle that "the distribution of the conditions of production determines the distribution of the fruits of production". In the revolutionary era, the Chinese Communist Party tackled the problem at the level of land ownership by fighting the landlords and dividing up the land. After the founding of New China, the Chinese Communist Party formally established the socialist system in 1956 by confiscating bureaucratic capital, transforming national capital, and implementing primary societies, senior societies and people's communes in rural areas, and implementing a planned economic ownership structure. After the founding of New China, the Chinese Communist Party formally established the socialist system in 1956 by confiscating bureaucratic capital, transforming national capital, and implementing primary societies, senior societies and people's communes in rural areas, and implementing a planned economic ownership structure. However, the painstaking practical exploration has made the Chinese Communists realise that Chinese socialism is in fact still in its primary stage and that the liberation and development of the productive forces is still fundamental. Thus, Mao Zedong wrote On the Ten Relations, Deng Xiaoping proposed reform and opening up, the 14th National Congress established the socialist market economy system, and the 19th National Congress established the public ownership system as the mainstay and the joint development of a variety of ownership economies as the basic socialist economic system. This is a creative development of Marxism. The mainstay of our economy is still public ownership, but other forms of ownership have also developed together, which is more conducive to solving the problem of poverty in the light of China's realities.
  3. Achieving common prosperity is also a basic principle of Marxism and an essential requirement of socialism, but common prosperity is not the same as walking in lockstep. How to properly address the relationship between equity and efficiency or parity and efficiency? Comrade Deng Xiaoping's proposal to let some regions and some people get rich first, and through the first to drive the latter to eventually achieve common prosperity, actually broke a deadlock in the implementation mechanism for achieving common prosperity. Through the incentive for some regions and some people to get rich first, the original rigid and conservative structure of common poverty was broken, and the "Sowell paradox" of "common prosperity" was successfully overcome. This is a major innovative development of Marxist anti-poverty theory, which is in line with China's national conditions and has been proven to be a successful path by Chinese practice.
  4. Since the 18th National Congress, the Party Central Committee, with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, has paid great attention to anti-poverty issues, especially rural poverty reduction, put forward the goal of building a moderately prosperous society on all fronts, and as the leader of the "Four Comprehensive" strategic layout, put forward the major proposition of poverty eradication, and put forward a series of initiatives around this proposition. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty theory is a major original innovation to Marxism and a significant contribution to Marxist anti-poverty theory, highlighted in two ways. First, the comprehensive nature of the fight against poverty. In addition to adhering to the basic Marxist principle that the distribution of the conditions of production determines the distribution of the fruits of production, adhering to the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, adhering to the principle of public ownership and the joint development of a variety of ownership economies, and making it the basic socialist economic system, it also places special emphasis on education, medical care, social security, infrastructure construction, the ecological environment and other aspects, touching on some of the issues that lead to poverty. It has built a three-dimensional framework for poverty alleviation, forming a "trinity of special poverty alleviation, sectoral poverty alleviation and social poverty alleviation". The second is the precision of anti-poverty. The important idea of precise poverty alleviation is put forward, and the implementation of precise poverty alleviation is also guaranteed by multi-dimensional efforts through such initiatives as precise identification, establishment of files, tracking and assistance, and timely pinning. This is actually a question of implementation and guarantee mechanisms, solving the long-standing problem of anti-poverty not being well implemented on the ground and in detail, and providing a Chinese solution to the world's fight against poverty.
  5. Development is for the people and development relies on the people. Marxism is a scientific theory of the human person, concerned with the full and free development of the human person, and in particular of each individual. Therefore, peoplehood is the distinctive colour of Marxism. The Communist Party of China is the party of the people, always adhering to the people as the centre and serving them wholeheartedly as its fundamental purpose. On the issue of anti-poverty, the Communist Party of China never treats the people as objects of charity, not simply as objects to be helped, but as a call and lead, and as a co-ordinator and service, with special emphasis on the people themselves acting to solve their own poverty problems; the people themselves are the main body of the fight against poverty, and the people are the creators of history and the real heroes. In the revolutionary era, we relied on the people, and it was the ocean of people's war that drowned our enemies; in today's battle against poverty, we are still fighting a people's war, relying on the power of all the people to get rid of poverty and move towards prosperity, which is another major contribution to Marxist anti-poverty theory.