The dream of ending poverty.

Byline: Rafia Zakaria

ONE short decade ago, I happened to read an article about Westerners arriving in China to adopt abandoned baby girls. Written by a woman who had adopted a baby girl from China, the article described the story of how her daughter had been found.

It had all started early one morning in spring when a man walking in a public garden thought he heard a baby crying. Indeed, not very far from him stood a park bench and on the bench was a worn wicker basket. The man went closer to investigate and much to his surprise found a crying infant in the basket. He immediately took the basket and brought it to an orphanage. The orphanage staff lifted the baby out of the basket to change her soiled clothes. When they did so, a small sweet potato fell out from the folds of the fabric.

Upon hearing the story, the woman who was adopting the baby expressed surprise. Why would a sweet potato be wrapped up with a baby? It was then that the orphanage staff told her that the sweet potato was likely the most valuable item the baby's mother, presumably a village woman, had possessed. Not able to keep the baby because of her poverty, she had nevertheless sent it off with the most precious item she had. Such items, they told her, were often found with the abandoned babies they tended in the orphanage.

If the Chinese state is to be believed, such a situation is unlikely to ever happen again. Last week, the People's Republic of China marked the end of extreme poverty in the country. According to the materials released by the Chinese state, 100 million people had now been lifted out of extreme poverty. This means that no one in China now lives under $1.69 a day.

There are questions about how China has managed to reduce the number of poor.

The People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, ran a three-page spread celebrating Xi Jinping's leadership for having reached the milestone a month before the deadline to achieve it. A dynamic leader had delivered on the promise of taking China into the new era. 'The problem of absolute poverty that has plagued us for thousands of years has come to an end' announced the triumphant People's Daily. For his part, Xi Jinping wants his nation to unite around the core and 'realise the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation'.

There are unanswered questions, however. According to the Washington Post, China has not released the standards or metrics it is using to define 'extreme poverty'...