A2X Consulting

According to Business Week, August 22/29, 2005 p 52-53, per capita income in Chinas has tripled in one generation, and has taken 300 million people out of poverty. Take a look at the chart ‘China Leads the Way ‘. They write: ‘China’s poverty was cut in half by 1990 and in half again by 2001.’ This means, it has taken China about 20 years to bring a population larger than the US, out of poverty.

I was doing some surfing to see what the secrets are, and of course there are many. I thought that the article from the World Bank’s web site, China’s Southwest Poverty Reduction Project, was particularly interesting. The World Bank project found that poverty was particularly stagnant in the rural areas and that farming was not a growth industry. Their strategy: ‘support for public health, basic education, rural infrastructure, and increased interregional labor mobility.’ Hope they didn’t spend a lot of $ to figure that out’¦. Would love though to know more about what it takes to realize that strategy. I suppose as always, strategy is often obvious. It is the execution that presents the bigger challenge.