Fewer beggars, better lives: A story of China's progress

More than 82 million foreign-entry trips were recorded in China last year. While sharing their travel experience, many of them said they were impressed by the country's good public security situation, modern infrastructure, low costs and the many free public toilets. Some said they were surprised at not having seen a single beggar during their stay in China.

Happy as I am at hearing these words about my country, I have to point out that begging still exists in China — I do see a few beggars now and then while traveling. A more accurate description would be to say that begging has reduced drastically in China.

I still recall a dozen or so beggars, broken bowls in hand, knocking on our door during my childhood, begging for a piece of steamed bun.

Frequent natural disasters such as droughts and floods in the area left millions of farmers and their families hungry. Begging became their last means of survival.

But the number of beggars has dramatically gone down, thanks to agricultural reforms China undertook nearly five decades ago. Encouraging farmers to toil on their own plots, instead of working collectively for the people's communes, helped improve productivity, enabling farmers to harvest more and store for a rainy day.

Tens of thousands of beggars could be seen on the streets even at the turn of the century. Some were people who had run into difficulties while many others, as was revealed in investigative reports, were lazybones who found begging an easier way to make money than toiling.

There were also many organized gangs forcing children, women and people with disabilities to beg for them. Some gangsters reportedly turned millionaires by just running such organized begging gangs.

Following decades of government efforts to contain organized crime and tackle the begging problem, such activities have largely disappeared.

Sociologists here attribute the disappearance to the following reasons: better living conditions in rural areas, wider social welfare coverage, a more effective social assistance system and the disappearance of cash in society.

At the end of 2020, China had successfully eliminated absolute poverty in its rural areas. Last year, the per capita disposable income in the rural areas stood at 24,456 yuan ($3,644.4).

Though the number remains low, it is enough to ensure rural residents have houses to live in and food to eat. When such basic living conditions are met, one has no excuse to go and beg.

The introduction of social welfare measures such as insurance came as a big plus to improving the quality of life in rural areas. Those aged above 60 can now expect to receive a few hundred yuan in pension every month.

When ill, more than half of the medical bills can be covered under the New Cooperative Medical Scheme, a voluntary insurance program introduced in 2003 for rural residents. Kids can be sent to schools for nine years of free compulsory education and, quite often, provided free lunch.

Those who can no longer work because they have disabilities or some mental health issues, and have no relatives to care for them, are sent to the local nursing homes to spend the rest of their lives. Statistics show there are 16,000 such homes with 1.68 million beds in rural China. If the vulnerable people prefer to stay near their villages, there are more than 140,000 mutual-aid elderly care service facilities serving them.

The few who still want to try their luck will soon find they can hardly get any alms because citizens nowadays no longer carry cash. However, there are some smart beggars who have already printed their QR code, which they carry along with them, but not all compassionate donors would want to scan it in this era of telecom fraud.

The dip in the number of beggars is the result of China's strong governance as well as a natural consequence of work done by the country for disadvantaged groups.

The author is former deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily.

kangbing@chinadaily.com.cn