China’s lockdowns put working class, poor provinces at risk of ‘falling back into poverty’

A year after President Xi Jinping declared an end to extreme poverty in China, economic fallout from Beijing’s zero-Covid ambitions is taking a hefty toll on livelihoods

Central leadership’s ‘common prosperity’ push is said to have been put on back-burner until economy recovers

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Residents of Changchun, Jilin province, line up for coronavirus testing. Authorities in the provincial capital will distribute cash and medical supplies to more than 50,000 people. Photo: AP

Published: 10:15pm, 7 Apr 2022Updated: 9:38am, 8 Apr 2022

Authorities in China’s northeast provinces have issued guidelines to protect their low-income populations – including farmers and small-business owners – from falling back into poverty, as the latest coronavirus outbreaks put the livelihoods of people in financially vulnerable regions at considerable risk.

Liaoning province and neighbouring Jilin province, the epicentre of the country’s latest Omicron wave, vowed assistance on Wednesday to those teetering on the brink of poverty. This highlights the economic ramifications of China’s zero-Covid policy, which it is sticking to even while wrestling with its worst outbreaks in more than two years.

Strict pandemic controls have restricted mobility; weighed on client demand; crippled the manufacturing and services sectors; slashed small-business earnings; and now risk delaying the spring ploughing of fields in the northeastern breadbasket.

The disruptions stemming from Beijing’s zero-Covid goal also threaten to undo the efforts of President Xi Jinping’s poverty-eradication campaign, which China’s leadership last year hailed as an achievement “unseen in human history”.

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China announced in February last year that it had lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty in the past four decades, accounting for 75 per cent of the world’s progress during this period.

China’s lockdowns put working class, poor provinces at risk of ‘falling back into poverty’

A year after President Xi Jinping declared an end to extreme poverty in China, economic fallout from Beijing’s zero-Covid ambitions is taking a hefty toll on livelihoods Central leadership’s ‘common prosperity’ push is said to have been put on back-burner until economy recovers

A year after President Xi Jinping declared an end to extreme poverty in China, economic fallout from Beijing’s zero-Covid ambitions is taking a hefty toll on livelihoods

Central leadership’s ‘common prosperity’ push is said to have been put on back-burner until economy recovers