He Xuefeng, male, born in June 1968, from Jingmen, Hubei, Ph.D. in Law, Dean of the School of Sociology of Wuhan University, Director of the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University, Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, specially-appointed professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, is one of the representatives of the “Huazhong Native School”.
He Xuefeng: Why Precision Poverty Alleviation Falls into FormalismAuthor | He XuefengSource | Zhongguancun Industrial Upgrading Research Institute
In the seven villages surveyed, after five years of poverty alleviation, except for the non-poor households who were misidentified as poor households, the situation of the truly poor households has not changed.——He Xuefeng
In December 2023, I conducted research in two counties and two townships in H province, focusing on precision poverty alleviation, and found some interesting discoveries.
Poor Villages and Non-Poor Villages
H Village, H Town, S County is a non-poor village, with a total of 35 households and 76 people who have been lifted out of poverty, of which 15 households are covered by the minimum living allowance, and 12 households are covered by the five guarantees. In 2016, there were a total of 42 registered poor households, of which seven five-guarantee households passed away, leaving only 35 households. That is to say, among the 35 households that have been lifted out of poverty, 27 households are recipients of the minimum living allowance and five guarantees, and only 8 households are non-recipients of the minimum living allowance and five guarantees. That is, among the registered poor households in the village, only 8 households did not get out of poverty through social security.
From 2016 to 2021, for five years, the village officials of H Village spent almost all their time on poverty alleviation. The County Public Security Bureau is the poverty alleviation unit for H Village. The County Public Security Bureau arranged three staff members to stay in the village for five days and four nights a week to provide assistance. Village officials and the cadres of the County Public Security Bureau who provided assistance visited farmers’ homes during the day to publicize policies. Almost everyone could recite by heart the eighteen superior policies that could provide financial support for poor households. According to regulations, village officials had to discuss assistance measures with the assisting cadres at night. Although they have been lifted out of poverty, they are still in the observation period, so the superior still requires the assisting cadres to stay in the village for five days and four nights a week. In the afternoon of December 2023, we were interviewing in H Village when a car suddenly drove over, saying that the village office of the County Party Committee Organization Department came to check the post. Fortunately, the assisting cadres were all in the village office and were having a symposium with us.
W Village is also not a poor village, with a total of 565 households and 2,711 people. There are 23 households and 50 people who have been lifted out of poverty, of which 12 households are lifted out of poverty through the minimum living allowance, 7 households are five-guarantee households, and only 4 households are non-recipients of the minimum living allowance and five guarantees.
L Village, a neighboring village with the same economic conditions as W Village, also has more than 500 households and more than 2,000 people. It was identified as a poor village by the superior. Poor villages must have a poverty rate of 10%. Therefore, L Village has more than 50 poor households and more than 200 people. Because it was identified as a poor village, during the poverty alleviation period, the superior invested more than 20 million yuan in L Village to build infrastructure. In fact, all the villages identified as poor villages by the superior have received a large amount of resource investment from the superior, and the infrastructure of poor villages far exceeds that of non-poor villages.
The chairman of the town’s People’s Congress said that from 2017 to 2021, all the work in the countryside was to serve and serve poverty alleviation. In fact, the main work of the county is also to serve and serve poverty alleviation. The construction of infrastructure for poor villages alone not only emptied the county’s finances, but also caused most counties to be heavily in debt.
The chairman of the town’s People’s Congress said that according to policy language and the superior’s ideas, an important aspect of precision poverty alleviation is to stimulate the internal motivation of farmers and introduce rural labor to work outside. In fact, young and middle-aged farmers with labor capacity have long gone out to work. Those who stay in the village and do not go out to work either have no labor force in their families, or the labor force is seriously ill or disabled. For households without labor force, there is no other way except for social security. As long as a household has a labor force going to work in the city, their income from working is enough to get rid of poverty, so they are not poor households.
A Village, S Town, Q County has a total of 420 households and 1,790 people, with a total of 3,875 mu of cultivated land, with an average of two mu per person. It is possible to make money by farming in A Village. In December 2023, when we conducted research, the highest land rent in the area reached 1,500 yuan/mu. A household with 10 mu of land can have an annual rent of more than 10,000 yuan. Their own farming income is definitely more.
A Village was designated as a poor village by the superior, with a total of 90 households and 270 people as registered poor households, of which 90 households and 270 people were lifted out of poverty. Among the households that were lifted out of poverty, 42 households and 79 people were recipients of the minimum living allowance, and 15 households and 15 people were five-guarantee households. Among the people who were lifted out of poverty in A Village, 33 households and 176 people were non-social security households. Because A Village is a poor village, the superior invested 26 million yuan to build infrastructure during the poverty alleviation period.
B Village is a non-poor village, with 698 households and 3,681 people, of which 41 households and 96 people are registered poor households, all of whom have been lifted out of poverty. Among the households that have been lifted out of poverty, 52 households and 89 people are recipients of the minimum living allowance, and 9 households and 12 people are five-guarantee households. The number of households that have been lifted out of poverty without the minimum living allowance and five guarantees is a negative number, and the number of people is also a negative number, which is incredible.
D Village has 418 households and 1,672 people, with 71 households and 207 people as registered poor households, and the same number of households that have been lifted out of poverty. 36 households and 46 people are lifted out of poverty through the minimum living allowance and five guarantees, and 8 households and 8 people are five-guarantee households.
C Village has 735 households and 2,956 people, with 58 households and 136 people as registered poor households, and the same number of households that have been lifted out of poverty. 39 households and 68 people are lifted out of poverty through the minimum living allowance and five guarantees, and 18 households and 18 people are five-guarantee households.
In the four villages I surveyed in S Town, Q County, A Village and D Village are both poor villages, and B Village and C Village are not poor villages. From my survey of the four villages, whether it is per capita cultivated land or housing construction, the economic development and the wealth of the villagers in the four villages are completely the same. The reason why there are poor households and non-poor villages is because the superior assigned 9 poor village indicators to S Town, and 9 poor villages were randomly selected from the 24 villages.
According to the requirements of poor villages, the poor population should account for more than 10% of the total village population. The registered poor population in A Village is 270 people, divided by the total population of 1,790 people, which is 15.1%. D Village is 207÷1672=12%.
The poverty incidence rate in B Village is 96÷2681=3.6%.
The poverty incidence rate in C Village is 136÷2956=4.6%.
Let’s look at the proportion of the population covered by the minimum living allowance and five guarantees in the four villages:
A Village: (79+15)÷1790=5.3%
D Village: (66+8)÷1672=4.4%
B Village: (89+12)÷2681=3.8%
C Village: (68+18)÷2956=3.0%
If we find the data of the total number of people covered by the minimum living allowance + five guarantees in the four villages, there will be more interesting comparisons.
From the situation of the four villages in S Town, B Village and C Village, which are non-poor villages, almost do not have households that have been lifted out of poverty other than social security. And from A Village and D Village, about 2/3 of the households that have been lifted out of poverty are non-social security households.
With the same economic conditions and the same market conditions, why are there such differences in different villages?
Employment Poverty Alleviation and Industrial Poverty Alleviation are Meaningless
Let’s analyze the precision poverty alleviation in H Town, S County and S Town, Q County.
According to the consistent statement of the rural cadres in the two townships surveyed, it is actually easy to identify whether a household is poor. That is, households with a labor force should not be poor households, and households without a labor force or with seriously ill or disabled labor force (such as car accidents) are poor households. In the market is readily available, and under the circumstances that it is almost impossible to find a job as long as the labor force enters the city, almost all young and middle-aged labor force in the area have gone to work in the city. As long as a household has a labor force going to work in the city, plus agricultural income, this household cannot be a poor household. Similarly, if a household does not have a young and middle-aged labor force, or the labor force is seriously ill or disabled, this household lacks income sources and must be included in the special assistance, that is, either the minimum living allowance or the five guarantees, that is, through social security.
For households without a labor force, any poverty alleviation method is ineffective. For example, arranging to work outside is of course impossible. Implementing industrial poverty alleviation, these households lacking labor force are often also lacking production capacity and market capacity, and the success rate of developing industries is very low. Under the circumstances that ordinary households are prone to failure in developing industries, it is almost impossible for households without a labor force to develop industries without failure. The survey of the two townships has proved that there are few successful cases of developing industries for poor households without a labor force.
In order to provide more employment opportunities for poor households, the nine poor villages in S Town invested more than one million yuan in each poor village to build poverty alleviation workshops, requiring the enterprises that come to the poverty alleviation workshops to rent at a rent of 5% of the investment, and to arrange at least 15 poor households to work. As a result, only four of the nine poverty alleviation workshops were rented out, and the rent was only a few thousand yuan, and employment could not be arranged. The problem is that poor households without a labor force cannot find employment even if they have employment opportunities. Farmers with a labor force, the income from working in the county town is much higher than that of the poverty alleviation workshops in the village. Why should they stay in the poverty alleviation workshops in the village with very low wages?
Households without a labor force or with seriously ill or disabled people, such households or individuals are included in the poor households, and are covered by social security. No one has any objection. The key is that it is impossible to get rid of poverty by encouraging employment outside and developing industries. This is something that should be particularly clear when registering and establishing files. In fact, in the two townships surveyed, the local practice is more precise, that is, for households with seriously ill or disabled people, industrial poverty alleviation and employment poverty alleviation are meaningless. There are only two ways to get rid of poverty: one is that the seriously ill or disabled people are cured and become normal labor force, and the other is that they pass away, and the family has no burden, and this family is also lifted out of poverty. In either case, employment poverty alleviation and industrial poverty alleviation are meaningless.
For households with a labor force, because there are universal market employment opportunities, there is no need for the poverty alleviation working team to help them find employment opportunities, and there is no need to create so-called employment opportunities in the village, which is purely a waste of financial resources. As for why there are a large number of poor households with a labor force in poor villages, the reason is nothing more than that these poor households with a labor force are not accurately identified, and non-poor households are identified as poor households. The reason why the identification is not accurate is that the superior has issued a poverty incidence rate that the poor villages must have. Since they have been identified as poor villages by the superior, they have to include many non-poor households with a labor force into the registered poor households.
The Situation of Poor Households Has Not Changed
In fact, in the seven villages surveyed in the two townships, the situation of non-poor villages is relatively normal, that is, the registered poor households are almost all recipients of the minimum living allowance and five guarantees without a labor force, and there are very few households with a labor force included in the registered poor households. Therefore, after completing the poverty alleviation task, the households that have been lifted out of poverty without a labor force still rely on the minimum living allowance and five guarantees to get out of poverty. Only a few registered poor households no longer rely on social assistance to get out of poverty. There are two typical situations: one is that a family member with a serious illness passes away, and the family no longer bears high medical expenses, so they are lifted out of poverty. The second is that the children of the family who are college students graduate from college and start working.
The reason why there are so many households with a labor force in poor villages that are included in the poor households and no longer rely on social security to get out of poverty after precision poverty alleviation is because these households with a labor force should not be included in the poor households in the first place. They were misidentified as poor households in order to complete the poverty incidence rate of the poor villages required by the superior. Poverty alleviation for these false poor households is meaningless and a waste of resources.
In other words, except for individual cases, in the seven villages surveyed in the two townships, the truly poor households in the villages are households without a labor force, or households with seriously ill or disabled labor force. Such households, no matter what poverty alleviation methods are used, will still have to rely on social security to get out of poverty in the end. And households with a labor force are generally not likely to be poor households. If they are misidentified as poor households and poverty alleviation is carried out, it is completely wrong and a waste of resources.
In this way, in the five years from the registration and establishment of files in 2016 to the announcement of poverty alleviation in 2021, in the seven villages in the two counties surveyed, except for the non-poor households who were misidentified as poor households and did not rely on social security to get out of poverty, almost all the truly poor households without a labor force still had to rely on social security to get out of poverty, which was no different from before poverty alleviation.
That is to say, in the seven villages surveyed, after five years of poverty alleviation, except for the non-poor households who were misidentified as poor households, the situation of the truly poor households has not changed. And in these five years, precision poverty alleviation, which is precise to households and individuals, has occupied almost all the administrative and financial resources of the county and villages. Most of these resources are wasted on the infinitely complex formalism of welcoming inspections and conforming to logic, which should not be done. This article was written on January 1, 2024.
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