But the hardest work remains ahead. As many as half of the 43 million people who are officially classified as in poverty could be disabled, according to the government. The campaign must also move into areas that have been chronically poor for generations, including many that are home to ethnic minorities.

Officials in these areas are resettling villagers near cities in government-provided apartments, sometimes against their will. They are handing out cash subsidies to disabled residents. And they are following Mr. Xi’s call for a “targeted” approach, tracking the progress of individual residents on giant bulletin boards in town centers.

Corruption has emerged as a problem, with more than 1,800 people having been investigated last year for embezzling antipoverty funds and related crimes, according to official statistics. Scholars have also cast doubt on the reliability of some data, saying some local officials appear to be understating poverty rates amid intense pressure to meet Mr. Xi’s targets.

Then there is the fact that Mr. Xi’s campaign is not focused on urban areas. There are more than 200 million rural migrants in China’s cities, where many struggle to receive education, heath care and other benefits because the local government does not consider them residents. Some fall into unemployment or bad health and live in squalid conditions.

“This is a very big hole in the overall picture, which the government rarely addresses,” said Philip G. Alston, a scholar and adviser to the United Nations who issued a report this year on extreme poverty and human rights in China. “The reality is that many of them are living in extreme poverty.”

On a street corner in downtown Beijing, Gu Xin, 63, sat on a flattened cardboard box begging for money. Mr. Gu moved to the city from central China six months ago, only to find himself unable to get steady work after his back was injured in a construction accident.

As he bowed to passers-by, a propaganda sign flashed in the background: “Without the Communist Party, there is no new China.” Mr. Gu said he had no choice but to ask strangers for money so that he could pay medical bills and support his family.

“I can’t live here,” he said. “I don’t know where to go.”