China continues to astonish the world
850 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past forty years. This includes 100 million of the intractably poor, who became the focus of poverty alleviation in 2012. As a result, hundreds of millions of people have joined the ever-expanding working and middle classes, with access to housing, healthcare, education and jobs.
Xi Jinping’s program targeted people that even China’s growing economy couldn’t reach. Millions of officials were tasked to work at the grassroots level in remote villages, bringing the forgotten and ignored out of absolute poverty. China claims the nation has been changed forever, with extreme poverty eliminated by the end of 2020.
This unique, narrative documentary tells the story of how the ‘targeted poverty alleviation campaign’ actually worked, on the ground.
CHINA’S WAR ON POVERTY is a journey across China, following the agents of change and the families they assist.
No journalist or film crew has ever been able to work at this level of inside access, probing how poverty is defined, while being able to ask what people are doing to find and stop fraud inside the program. During production the film team pressed hard to let both government officials and poor families tell their own stories, in their own words.
Today, over 400 million educated millennials are poised to change this growing superpower.
While China has broken all records of economic development in the past forty years, Xi Jinping views the poverty alleviation program as his most important mission.
PHOTO GALLERY
Photographs by Peter Getzels