A British scholar says China's poverty alleviation should be viewed as part of a broader and evolving development process. Professor Robert Walker, an emeritus fellow at the University of Oxford, believes many Western discussions often overlook the changing nature of poverty and China's broader goal of achieving common prosperity. CGTN's Huang Yue spoke to the professor on the sidelines of the 2026 Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing.

HUANG YUE CGTN Reporter "Earlier, the Financial Times article reignited debate over whether China has truly 'ended poverty.' And you wrote an article in response to that. From your perspective, what's the biggest misunderstanding in some Western discussions about China's poverty alleviation?"

ROBERT WALKER Professor at Beijing Normal University, Emeritus Fellow at University of Oxford "I don't think they believe, and therefore they don't look to find positively. You could always find an example, and partially tell the story. And then there's the language of poverty. Nobody opposes the eradication of poverty. But you can never truly eradicate poverty because poverty changes. We have one definition of poverty – absolute, which is about whether I have enough resources to live from today until tomorrow. You can eradicate that poverty. China eradicated a version of that poverty in rural China, and that's what we're celebrating five years on. And it's true. It was a real achievement."

HUANG YUE CGTN Reporter "Some critics argue that China's poverty line is too low by international standards. What's your take on this?"

ROBERT WALKER Professor at Beijing Normal University, Emeritus Fellow at University of Oxford "I've argued all the time that poverty is a process. It's dynamic, it's experienced dynamically. I wasn't poor last week. I am now. I won't be next. It's the same in a global sense. China has developed enormously since opening up. That journey that is an incredible journey. China has moved to become a country with an upper middle country, knocking on the door of becoming a high-income country. So going back to the Financial Times article, the journalists picked up the World Bank's definition for upper middle-income countries, which I think is 8.30 dollars a day, and said China is not addressing that. What I was able to show was that China did address that, although it didn't do so explicitly, it never mentioned that it was doing that, but it focuses on sustainable growth. And as economic growth rose, so living standards rose. So ever whenever you pinch that threshold, people will be lifted above it, which is what China was doing. But if you focus on what China has measured and eradicated, that poverty is too low for the China of today. China recognizes that. But perhaps the story that it wants to tell could be more nuanced than the story that it actually tells."