China's record of economic growth and poverty reduction has been extraordinary in the 1980s
and 1990s. In the two decades since the economic reform started, the economy has grown
more than fivefold, the average income per capita has quadrupled, and 270 million Chinese
have been lifted out of absolute poverty. Elsewhere in the world, by contrast, the record of
poverty reduction is disappointing: Using the World Bank one-dollar-a-day poverty line (in
1993 PPP term) and excluding China, at least 100 million more people are living in poverty
today than a decade ago. Including China, the total number of poor remained about the same
in 1998 as in 1987, although the proportion of poor in population reduced from 28 percent to
24 percent.