ABSTRACT
Xi Jinping’s stamp on the ongoing, still relatively serious phenomenon of urban poverty has been significantly negative. Despite frequent mentions of the “wiping out” of poverty for many millions, what his government has done has been directed only at the countryside. Also, in the cities, the numbers granted welfare supplements (the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (dibao)) dropped from 23.9 million at the peak in 2009 down to just 7.25 million in 2021. Whereas there is no urban standardized demarcation to designate who is poor in cities, Chinese scholars have demonstrated that urban indigence is rising, and the per capita disposable income of the lowest-income urban households declined from 18.7 percent of that of the highest-income quintile to only 16 percent in 2021. Part of this penury resulted from massive factory layoffs (late 1990s-early 2000s), and part from the treatment of rural migrants working in urban areas. The chapter details state investment as well as the nature of the living conditions of the destitute in cities and reviews pertinent policies promulgated during Xi’s reign. It concludes with the observation that the urban poor are simply irrelevant to Xi’s Dream of the future.
