2023: The Year’s Best From RFE/RL’s Photographers Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Day: December 28, 2023
By He Jun
To achieve comprehensive poverty alleviation, the Chinese government has incurred significant costs. From 2013 to 2021, over 8 years, central, provincial, and local governments have invested nearly RMB 1.6 trillion in special poverty alleviation funds, with the central government contributing RMB 660.1 billion yuan.
Since the initiation of the poverty alleviation campaign, there has been a cross-provincial adjustment of land quota indicators and the intra-provincial transfer of funds exceeding RMB 440 billion. Additionally, over RMB 710 billion has been disbursed in small-scale poverty alleviation loans, RMB 668.8 billion in poverty alleviation refinancing, and RMB 9.2 trillion in targeted poverty alleviation loans.
Furthermore, the provinces and municipalities in the eastern part of the country have provided more than RMB 100.5 billion in financial aid and social support to poverty-stricken areas, while enterprises from these regions have collectively invested over RMB 1 trillion in poverty-stricken cooperative areas. The substantial resources invested by the country, regions, and society constitute the critical foundation for achieving comprehensive poverty alleviation.
However, due to China’s large population, significant regional disparities, and marked urban-rural differences, even if comprehensive poverty alleviation is achieved at a specific point in time, completely escaping poverty and transitioning to sustainable development remains a challenging task given the country’s relatively fragile foundation. Particularly, as the Chinese economy experiences a notable slowdown, ensuring there is no “reverting to poverty on a larger scale” poses a challenge.
In fact, over the past decade, China’s economic growth has markedly decelerated. Since slowing from 9.3% in the previous year to 7.7% in 2012, its economic growth has not exceeded 8% in any year, with most years seeing growth rates below 7%, except for 2021, when it reached 8.1% due to base effects. According to researchers at ANBOUND, from 2013 to 2022, the average annual economic growth rate in China was only 6.2%. Especially in the last three years, this has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching its lowest growth rate in 34 years at one point. This exerts significant pressure on China’s sustained efforts to eradicate scale-based poverty.
There are good reasons for China to be vigilant in this regard. If the economic growth rate continues to be sluggish, businesses struggle to develop, and the employment stability and declining incomes of ordinary people become persistent issues, then maintaining a position above the poverty line for an extended period will become daunting. The best way to prevent a scale-driven return to poverty is to sustain economic growth, especially in rural areas, which should align with rural revitalization efforts. The continuous development of both urban and rural economies is crucial for establishing a solid foundation to maintain the comprehensive poverty alleviation status.
Looking back at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country and the challenging economic recovery in China in 2023, there is ample reason to be concerned. If the Chinese economy cannot stabilize its growth at a certain level, an economic slowdown may be accompanied by the onset of “scale-driven return to poverty.” Since 2021, researchers at ANBOUND have consistently emphasized that economic issues are the most significant challenges in China. Particularly in 2022, when pandemic control measures were stringent, we noted the potential rupture in the resilience of the Chinese economy. ANBOUND even suggested that, in contemporary China, economic issues constitute the country’s most significant political problem. While many in the market believed that China’s economic recovery after the pandemic was inevitable in 2023, we argued that the economic damage inflicted and the global supply chain restructuring could not guarantee China’s post-pandemic economic recovery.
Against this backdrop, the possibility of a resurgence of poverty in China should not be taken lightly. While such an occurrence in rural areas is visible, it might not be as noticeable in urban areas. For urban areas, particularly among high-debt individuals mostly related to housing purchases, those facing implicit unemployment, and the young population with an unemployment rate exceeding 20%, all these would need to be given focus on.
Final analysis conclusion:
When economic recovery shows signs of sluggishness, the recently alleviated poverty issues in China may resurface. The country needs to pay close attention not only to the return to poverty in rural areas but also to the emergence of new impoverished groups within the urban system.
He Jun is a researcher at ANBOUND
Cornell researchers partnered with New York livestock farmers to analyze transactions at farmers markets, finding that sales were better on Sundays, early in the morning, and during certain months of the year. The study, which researchers believe is the first peer-reviewed analysis of customer-level transaction data at farmers markets, gives new insights into how farmers can make markets more profitable for them.
The researchers and farmers used point-of-sale devices that record sales and process credit card payments to look at more than 26,000 transactions. The study, “Increasing Customer Purchases at Farmers Markets Using Point-of-Scale Scanner Data,” published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
It showed that, on average, farmers market customers spent more per purchase on Sundays compared to Saturdays. They bought more during the holiday months of March, April, November and December. The biggest sales were made at the beginning of the market or even before it opened, and then transaction totals declined substantially by hour thereafter. Ground beef was typically purchased in quantities of two pounds or more. Customers also purchased more when paying with debit or credit cards. And, when the number of transactions in a five-minute period increased, the dollars spent per transaction decreased.
“Traditional retailers like grocery stores have used scanner data for years to better inform how they should market to their customers,” said Todd Schmit, professor of applied economics and policy and co-author of the study. “For farmers, the data was just never available before. So now with the advent of new technologies, we can bring that marketing power to the farmer.”
Farmers do not just vie for customers at the market, they also compete against grocery stores that carry local food products. Plus, earlier research showed that farmers markets are the worst performing sales channel for vegetable farms in terms of sales per hour of marketing labor.
The findings lead to many specific recommendations to help farmers increase their sales. For example, farmers could attend more Sunday markets, increase product prices and volume at holidays, and bundle products like ground beef.
One of the hottest debates in archeology is how and when humans first arrived in North America. Archaeologists have traditionally argued that people walked through an ice-free corridor that briefly opened between ice sheets an estimated 13,000 years ago.
But a growing number of archeological and genetic finds — including human footprints in New Mexico dated to around 23,000 years old — suggests that people made their way onto the continent much earlier. These early Americans likely traveled along the Pacific coastline from Beringia, the land bridge between Asia and North America that emerged during the last glacial maximum when ice sheets bound up large amounts of water causing sea levels to fall.
Now, in research presented at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting (AGU23) in San Franciso, paleoclimate reconstructions of the Pacific Northwest hint that sea ice may have been one way for people to move farther south.
The idea that early Americans may have traveled along the Pacific Coast isn’t new. People were likely south of the massive ice sheets that once covered much of the continent by at least 16,000 years ago. Given that the ice-free corridor wouldn’t be open for thousands of years before these early arrivals, scientists instead proposed that people may have moved along a “kelp highway.” This theory holds that early Americans slowly traveled down into North America in boats, following the bountiful goods found in coastal waters.
Archeologists have found evidence of coastal settlements in western Canada dating from as early as 14,000 years ago. But in 2020, researchers noted that freshwater from melting glaciers at the time may have created a strong current that would make it difficult for people to travel along the coast.
Ice highway over dangerous water
To get a fuller picture of ocean conditions during these crucial windows of human migration, Summer Praetorius of the US Geological Survey and her colleagues looked at climate proxies in ocean sediment from the coast. Most of the data came from tiny, fossilized plankton. The abundance and chemistry of these organisms help reconstruct ocean temperatures, salinity and sea ice cover.
Praetorious’ presentation is part of a session on the climate history and geology of Beringia and the North Pacific during the Pleistocene, the current ice age, at AGU23. The week-long conference has brought 24,000 experts from across the spectrum of the Earth and space sciences to San Francisco this year and connected 3,000 online attendees.
Praetorious’ team used climate models and found that ocean currents were more than twice the strength they are today during the height of the last glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago due to glacial winds and lower sea levels. While not impossible, to paddle against, these conditions would have made traveling by boat very difficult, Praetorius said.
However, the records also showed that much of the area was home to winter sea ice until around 15,000 years ago. As a cold-adapted people, “rather than having to paddle against this horrible glacial current, maybe they were using the sea ice as a platform,” Praetorius said.
Arctic people today travel along sea ice on dog sleds and snow mobiles. Early Americans may also have used the ‘sea ice highway’ to get around and hunt marine mammals, slowly making their way into North America in the process, Praetorius said. The climate data suggest conditions along the coastal route may have been conducive to migration between 24,500-22,000 years ago and 16,400-14,800 years ago, possibly aided by the presence of winter sea ice.
While proving that people were using sea ice to travel will be tricky given most of the archeological sites are underwater, the theory provides a new framework for understanding how humans may have arrived in North America without a land bridge or easy ocean travel.
And the sea ice highway isn’t mutually exclusive with other human migrations further down the line, says Praetorius. The team’s models show , the Alaskan current had calmed down by 14,000 years ago, making it easier for people to travel by boat along the coast.
“Nothing is off the table,” she said. “We will always be surprised by ancient human ingenuity.”