Source: NYT (10/26/20)
China Aims to End Extreme Poverty, but Covid-19 Exposes Gaps
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The pandemic has worsened longstanding conditions that have widened inequality, hindering Xi Jinping’s vow to “leave no one behind.”
By Javier C. Hernández

Farmers at night school in Xiaoshan, a village in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, one of the country’s poorest regions, during a government-led media tour. Credit…Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock

Xu Rudong, a farmer in eastern China, thought he had left poverty behind long ago. He turned a small plot of land into a flourishing field of leeks, selling enough to pay for luxuries like fish and meat for his wife and four children. He even had money left over to buy an electric scooter.

Now Mr. Xu is once again struggling to pay for basic necessities like food and medicine. The economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has hurt his income, and severe flooding has devastated his crops.

“We are poor, poor people,” Mr. Xu, 48, said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Wangjiaba, a village of 36,000 in Anhui Province. “We don’t eat meat anymore.”

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to declare victory in the next two months in a campaign to eliminate extreme poverty in the country. The Chinese economy is once again gaining strength, and the Communist Party’s achievements in reducing poverty are expected to feature prominently this week at a conclave of party leaders in Beijing. Continue reading →

Source: NYT (10/20/20)
In China, the Formidable Prosecutor Turned Lonely Rights Defender
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After sheltering a prominent dissident, Yang Bin, a former prosecutor, is now under the scrutiny of the police. But she has no regrets.
By Amy Qin

Yang Bin, a former prosecutor in China, is now a defense lawyer. “When many people look at the system, they see its strength. When I look at it, I see only its fragility,” she says. Credit…via Yang Bin

Yang Bin was at home when two dozen Chinese police surrounded her house and entered, searching for the man she had recently taken in as a houseguest. Filing in quickly, the officers found their suspect upstairs and arrested him, ending a weekslong manhunt.

The police also detained Ms. Yang for questioning. They wanted to know how Xu Zhiyong, one of China’s most outspoken government critics, had come to find refuge with her, a Communist Party member and former government prosecutor.

For Ms. Yang, the turn of events came with no small irony. In her old job, she had escorted death row prisoners to a police station near the one in which she was being interrogated, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. This time she was regarded as a suspect, and the police had also taken her husband and 20-year-old son.

“Even though I was being questioned like a criminal, I knew in my heart I hadn’t done anything wrong,” Ms. Yang, 50, who was later released with her family, said in a recent telephone interview from her home on Seagull Island, a rural area on the outskirts of Guangzhou. “When many people look at the system, they see its strength. When I look at it, I see only its fragility.” Continue reading →