China Global Television Network
China on Thursday declared a "complete victory" to its battle against extreme poverty, with 98.99 million rural impoverished citizens lifted above a government-defined poverty line on annual per-capita income.
That is a key indication that the country has managed to usher in a moderately prosperous society in all respects on schedule.
That is 10 years earlier than the world's most populous country's plan to realize the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The achievement was made on the same year when the Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrates the centenary of its founding.
"This is the great glory for the Chinese people, the CPC and our nation!" Xi said at a gathering to mark the country's accomplishments in extreme poverty eradication and commend role models in that cause, hailing the achievement as "a miracle on earth that should be written into the history."
The event was held at the Great Hall of the People in capital Beijing Thursday morning.
Reform takes time, arduous work
The start was not easy.
While in his 30s, Xi was sent down to work in the early 1980's as a grassroots-level official in Zhengding County, northern Hebei Province in the country's call for large-scale poverty relief programs. There he started his reform experiments: rural land contracts. He then later became a secretary of the prefectural Party committee in Ningde, southeastern Fujian Province.
"I always felt a sense of unease," Xi recalled in his book "Up and Out of Poverty." "Poverty alleviation is an immense undertaking that requires the efforts of several generations."
Over the next two decades, he brought his dream of poverty elimination to the center of China's political life.
"Xi's reform is derived from his experience," said Shi Zhihong, a former deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee. "He knew that the rigid old paths would lead nowhere, and reform was a must."