Explained: China's Stone Soup approach for poverty reduction

What is Stone Soup Folklore?

It is a European folklore that teaches people the value of sharing. In the story some travelers carry nothing with themselves but a pot for cooking. 

They reach a town where the villagers were unwilling to share their food. The travelers filled the pot with stream water and dropped a large stone in it. Upon asking what the dish was, they answered it was stone soup. 

They said it tastes extremely good and they would love to share it with the villagers but the soup is missing some garnishing which would make it taste even better. By then the villagers had anticipated great tasteful soup.

So one of them brought some carrots to put in the soup. Another villager who had interest in the soup handed a little seasoning to them which then led to one villager after another adding some ingredients to the soup from their homes. The stone is then removed and all the travelers along with the villagers enjoyed a tasty meal.

This story teaches people the value of sharing. China has started working on the same strategy now in order to remove poverty from the country. 

Background: China's use of Stone Soup Strategy

1. China has deployed this approach to alleviate poverty in the country. From 1990 till 2011 , absolute poverty had seen a downfall in China from 439 million to 250 million. 
2. Once Xi Jinping became the President in 2013 he set the deadline of poverty removal till 2020 and took it as a core mission of his administration. 
3. It was announced in February 2021 that absolute poverty had been eradicated from China. 
4. As per the figures reported almost 98.99 million people had been lifted above the poverty line in China. 

What is China's official poverty line?

It is 4000 yuan per year which is equivalent to US$ 619 per year. The poverty line lies way below the threshold of the world banks 1.9 $/day and economists recommended 5.5 dollars per day. 

How did China achieve the feat?

1. China devised a very exclusive and focused campaign to eradicate poverty
2. It also revised the ways to incentivise the local governments. Earlier, the local officers were evaluated based on their annual GDP but then later this was revised. The local officials were evaluated by their poverty alleviation achievements.
3. They officials and the government of the country also tracked poverty at household levels. A National Poverty Registration System was built and implemented to record, track and manage every poor household in the country. 
4. Also various private sectors were rushed in to provide more resources. 

Examples:

Alibaba also set up a poverty relief fund of 1.5 billion dollars and used their online e-commerce platform to train various farmers to sell their products online. 

Tencent and JD.com launched a poverty alleviation programme and used the platforms to boost sales of farm products and goods. 

India China comparative study:

850 million plus Chinese have been lifted above the poverty line while China's poverty rate fell from 88% in 1981 to 0.7% in 2015. 

India's rate comparatively has declined from 21.6% in 2011 to 13.4% in 2015. It has lifted more than 90 million people from extreme poverty. 

The lack of focused approach and single poverty eradication programme along with high corruption may be counted as a cause for this. 

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