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Hong Kong
OpinionComment
Edward Pinkney
Paul Yip
Edward PinkneyandPaul Yip

Opinion | China’s anti-poverty playbook should inspire Hong Kong to act

  • The single-mindedness with which Beijing has pursued its goal to eradicate absolute poverty is worthy of emulation
  • The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are good starting points for Hong Kong to work towards, mapping out local, measurable targets along the way

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Edward PinkneyandPaul Yip
China’s recent white paper celebrating the end of extreme poverty will be dismissed by critics as propaganda or PR fluff. Yet what cannot easily be dismissed is the evidence that mainland China has indeed made extraordinary economic progress over recent decades, and that its leaders have achieved much of what they set out to do in eradicating absolute poverty.

The speed with which draconian measures were introduced to curb the spread of Covid-19 is also telling. Those living elsewhere, including in Hong Kong, may be asking whether they are seeing the same degree of collective single-mindedness in pursuit of social goals in their own regions. 

In January 2016, with a year remaining on his term as US president, Barack Obama announced a “moonshot” to find a cure for cancer, establishing a US$1 billion fund and task force to spearhead a five-year effort to accelerate immunotherapy breakthroughs. Five years on, there may have been some great progress – who knows? After the initial press conference and a report by then vice-president Joe Biden 10 months into the initiative, there have been no major public updates.

Some say that democratic nations cannot make long-term plans due to the term constraints of democracy. This is an absurd claim. Leaders may change after four or five years, but public interests and concerns are generally not so fickle. Governments can pick up the baton that’s handed to them by their predecessors, make adjustments and adopt their own style, all while still going in the direction expected of them.

To the extent that there are common ethical principles, there is no reason key public goals should not remain in place over a decade or two if they are genuinely for the betterment of the population. 

04:59

Xi Jinping declares ‘complete victory’ in China’s anti-poverty campaign, but some still left behind

Xi Jinping declares ‘complete victory’ in China’s anti-poverty campaign, but some still left behind
At times it may seem hard to believe that there are common and sustaining principles, particularly for those living in societies viewed as fractured or polarised, but a framework does already exist. The world has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals approved unanimously by United Nations members in 2015. It is for individual administrations and communities to decide for themselves how to draw these into their domestic agendas.
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