An official at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has acknowledged China's efforts in poverty eradication. FAO director Benjamin Davis was speaking at the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing where he praised China's success in eradicating absolute poverty by 2020. But he also flagged a growing challenge: how to keep young people from leaving the countryside. 

BENJAMIN DAVIS Director, Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division at FAO "I think China's success in reducing poverty is one of the great success stories of the 20th century. It was brought about by increasing the returns to assets that that poor people hold, which in the case of China was land and labor, right? So it was through agrarian reform and it was through improving education and health, and then linking that to an ongoing process of agro-industrialization and broader economic growth. It was incredibly successful. China then faced the additional challenge. How do you address the remaining, let's say, 100 million people you weren't able to bring out by those more broad-based policies. And so it needed more targeted interventions, literally almost going one by one to target people and help them get out of poverty through very specific policies. And then it achieved eradicating poverty by 2020."

LIU JIAXIN Beijing "Hundreds of millions of rural youth are leaving their land for cities. What must rural transformation change to make young people want to stay?"

BENJAMIN DAVIS Director, Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division at FAO "I think the big challenge that China faces, which the government recognizes is the big demographic shifts which are happening in rural areas. The policy of rural revitalization is important because the rural areas of China, as well as many other middle-and higher-income countries are emptying out of young people. So the challenge now is, how do you retain the interest in the attraction of rural activities. I think rural youth will stay if they can have a decent income, if they can have a decent life, if they can have a business, or if they can find a job. That's what people are looking for fundamentally."