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They define 4,000-yuan (about $609) as the national poverty line. Significant milestone.

The average annual net income of impoverished people in these nine counties has risen to 11,487 yuan (about $1,740)

Presumably $1740 per annum in rural China is enough to meet basic needs.

Average means approximately half the population makes _less_ than that (In reality, probably more than half, because you need a lot of lower numbers to balance out the population making double/triple/quadruple/more than that).

I've lived in a country with vast scale poverty and what having an average income of over $1k would really functionally eradicate poverty. People are naturally communal in most places and will share resources within nested communities so that the distribution doesn't matter.

For comparison in the US it's at least $12,760.

Still, it's a major achievement, even if it was achieved with some highly questionable moves - (forcibly?) relocating 2M people to cities

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