Harvard-China connection highlighted by President Bacow visit
China learned from other nations as it modernized its economy and embraced aspects of capitalism, but knowledge flows in both directions. Now, one Harvard scholar thinks there may be lessons for the rest of the world in a great Chinese success story: slashing poverty. Between 1990 and 2015, China reduced extreme poverty by 94 percent, a change so dramatic and affecting so many people that it accounts for fully half of the global reduction in extreme poverty (defined as living on less than $1.25 per day) over that time. In fact, according to senior lecturer on government Nara Dillon, the United Nation’s 2015 announcement that it had achieved its Millennium Development Goal of halving global extreme poverty would have been impossible without the gains in China. Dillon said her research on China’s antipoverty programs may have limited value in developed nations where such extreme poverty is uncommon, but it likely has important...