At this year’s two sessions of the Communist Party of China (CPC), CPC Premier Li Keqiang once again made remarks that were inconsistent with CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping when he delivered his government work report.
On March 5, Li Keqiang delivered the government work report at the National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China. Li Keqiang’s speech was broadcast live on CCTV and lasted about one hour.
Li Keqiang spoke about issues related to rural poverty eradication, saying, “Promote stable employment for people who have been lifted out of poverty, increase skills training,…… stratification and classification to strengthen permanent help for low-income rural populations, ‘to ensure that no large-scale poverty eradication occurs ‘”
Li Keqiang’s “ensure that no large-scale poverty eradication” statement is consistent with the criticism that Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party, is again engaged in “campaign-style poverty eradication”.
However, when reporters checked official media reports, they found that the official media had changed Li Keqiang’s statement from “ensuring that no large-scale poverty eradication” to “ensuring that no large-scale poverty return”, but the CCTV video file remained unchanged.
On March 5, Li Keqiang said in his government work report: “Ensure that no large-scale poverty eradication will occur” (at around 44:35 minutes). (Video screenshot)
Some reports suggest that Li Keqiang misread the word, but others question whether Li Keqiang intended to read “return to poverty” as “escape from poverty”, or whether he had no intention to do so.
At last year’s Communist Party’s two sessions, Li Keqiang also made remarks that contradicted Xi Jinping.
The year 2020 is Xi’s much-touted “year of poverty eradication,” but Li told reporters on May 28, 2020, the day after the two sessions, that “600 million people in China earn an average of about 1,000 yuan a month, and it is difficult to rent an apartment in a medium-sized city with 1,000 yuan. It is difficult to rent a room in a medium-sized city, and now we are facing an Epidemic.”
According to the outside world, Li Keqiang’s remarks are suspected to puncture Xi Jinping’s claim that he will “eradicate poverty” by 2020 and achieve a moderately prosperous society.
The Twitter account “financial cold eyes” pointed out that Li Keqiang’s revelation that 600 million people have a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan can be said to be a kind of defiance, which is in the face of Xi Jinping’s so-called “Chinese dream, the community of human Destiny and the realization of a moderately prosperous society by 2020″ remarks.
In October 2015, Xi Jinping’s administration proposed a comprehensive poverty eradication program and began to deploy it personally.
On November 23, 2020, the Guizhou provincial government announced that the last nine poor counties in the province had been officially de-designated as “poor counties”. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party authorities have claimed that all of mainland China has been lifted out of poverty and that the goal of “lifting all poverty in the country by 2020” has been accomplished.
However, the State Council’s Poverty Alleviation Office, headed by Li Keqiang, said on Nov. 25, 2020, that the removal of poverty from all poor counties does not mean full poverty eradication, and that the central government should decide whether to remove poverty.
On December 3 of the same year, Xi Jinping also declared at the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China that the authorities had completed “the target task of poverty eradication” as scheduled.
On February 25, 2021, at the “National Poverty Eradication Conference” held by the Chinese Communist Party authorities, Xi again declared that China’s war on poverty had achieved “comprehensive victory”.
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