ABSTRACT
Introduction Since starting economic reforms in the early 1980s, China has substantially reduced its rural-poor population, from 250 million in 1981 to 23.65 million in 2005, based on the official poverty line for 2005 – an annual per capita net income of 683 yuan (China State Statistics Bureau, 2006). This was cited as a global success story (UNDP, 2005, pp. 22-3). Economic reforms have contributed enormously to raising the living standards of the general population in China and therefore are regarded as the most effective tactic for reducing the developmentrelated poverty that characterized pre-reform China (Wang et. al., 2004). The rural population has certainly benefited from the reforms, although this may be due to the “trickle-down effect” envisaged by policy-makers in the early years of the reforms, who believed that economic development is the ultimate solution to poverty. Nevertheless, the removal of tight state controls over the economic activities of peasants resulted in continued increases in their incomes in the years following the reforms, which directly contributed to raising the majority of the rural poor out of poverty, particularly in the early years of the reforms.
