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What is China's official definition of poverty for 2025?
Executive Summary
China does not appear to have announced a new numeric national poverty line specifically for 2025 in the provided materials; the enduring official rural absolute poverty threshold remains the 2011 standard of RMB 2,300 per year (constant 2010 prices), often expressed as roughly $0.93 per day or about $2.30 per day at 2011 PPP in analyses that convert the figure for international comparison [1]. International agencies and analysts apply different benchmarks — notably the World Bank’s upper-middle‑income country benchmark of $8.30/day (2011 PPP) for cross‑country comparisons — producing markedly larger poverty headcount estimates for 2025 than China’s domestic line would imply [2] [3]. The sources also show China shifting attention toward relative poverty metrics (percentages of median income) and consolidation of poverty‑alleviation gains after claiming elimination of absolute poverty in 2020–21, creating ongoing definitional tension between domestic and international measures [4] [5].
1. Why the 2011 rural line still anchors official Chinese statistics — and what it means in dollars
China’s domestic, official poverty threshold that underpins many governmental announcements was set in 2011 at RMB 2,300 per year (2010 constant prices), equivalent in official conversions to about $0.93 per day at nominal exchange and roughly $2.30 per day at 2011 PPP for rural price adjustments. This figure is cited in analyses of China’s poverty eradication campaign and is the basis for the government’s claim of lifting people out of absolute rural poverty [1]. Because this number was formulated for rural conditions and adjusted for local price differences, it is not designed for direct comparison with contemporary international poverty lines without recalculation and PPP updating; using it unadjusted in 2025 comparisons understates poverty relative to current international benchmarks [1] [6].
2. International benchmarks paint a different picture — World Bank’s $8.30/day comparison
Analysts and multilateral institutions use higher, standardized benchmarks to compare poverty across countries at different income levels. The World Bank’s benchmark for upper‑middle‑income countries — $8.30/day (2011 PPP) — is used in the World Bank’s China briefs and projections, generating estimates such as a projected poverty rate of 13.4% in 2025 under that threshold and 11.9% in 2026, figures that contrast sharply with domestic zero‑poverty claims when using the national line [2] [3]. These international comparisons illustrate that “eradication of absolute poverty” under China’s 2011 line does not equate to elimination of material deprivation by global middle‑income standards, highlighting the role of choice of benchmark in headline statistics [2].
3. Government claims versus external assessments — converging facts, diverging frames
Chinese government sources emphasize the successful lifting of tens of millions of rural residents out of poverty and consolidation policies to sustain gains after the 2020–21 eradication declaration [7] [5]. External analysts and datasets point to the continued presence of households who would be poor under higher international lines and to different methodological choices — such as using updated PPPs, urban‑rural price structures, or relative measures — that yield larger poverty headcounts for 2025 [2] [6]. The discrepancy is less about whether poverty existed historically and more about which poverty definition policymakers choose, a choice that dramatically changes reported prevalence and policy implications [1] [2].
4. The emerging policy pivot: measuring relative poverty and what that changes
Several analyses and institutional discussions note China’s movement toward relative poverty metrics — thresholds defined as 40%, 50% or 60% of national median disposable income — as the country transitions from an absolute eradication objective to managing longer‑term inequality and social protection [4]. Adopting relative metrics would shift the focus from an absolute consumption floor to income distribution and social cohesion, likely increasing the reported poverty population by design compared with the 2011 absolute rural line and aligning domestic measurement with OECD‑style practices. This pivot signals that official discourse may increasingly combine the legacy absolute line with new relative indicators to justify both past achievements and future welfare strategies [4].
5. Bottom line: what to report for “China’s official poverty definition for 2025”
Based solely on the provided sources, the safest factual statement is that China’s formal, long‑standing official absolute poverty line remains the 2011 rural threshold (RMB 2,300/year, ≈ $2.30/day at 2011 PPP) and that no new numeric national poverty line for 2025 is evident in these materials; concurrently, international organizations use higher benchmarks such as $8.30/day (2011 PPP) to assess China in 2025, and Chinese policy discussion is shifting toward relative poverty measures [1] [2] [4]. The gap between domestic and international definitions explains why China can claim eradication of absolute rural poverty while other analyses still report substantial poverty under global middle‑income thresholds, making the choice of definition the pivotal fact for interpreting 2025 figures [7] [2].