13.86 million people were lifted out of poverty last year and from 1978 to 2017 the Asian giant has helped 740 million rural inhabitants.

China is expected to have lifted over 10 million people out of poverty in 2019, a senior official said Sunday, as part of a three-year plan to eradicate poverty completely by 2020.

“More than 95 percent of China's poor population is expected to shake off poverty and over 90 percent of poor counties are expected to be removed from the poverty list by the end of this year,” the Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development Liu Yongfu said.

The three-year action plan was launched in 2018 by the Central government, in which impoverished people should be guaranteed food and clothing, and children from poor families should be guaranteed a nine-year compulsory education. Basic medical needs and living conditions of the impoverished should also be guaranteed.

According to the Poverty Alleviation and Development group, 13.86 million people were lifted out of poverty last year. According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; while China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms.

The figure implies that an average of 19 million Chinese left poverty each year over the past 40 years. People whose annual income is lower than 2,300 yuan (US$337) are defined as living below the poverty line in China.

Liu added that now the country will facilitate poverty reduction efforts in regions suffering from extreme poverty and consolidate achievements of the poverty relief campaign.

On Sept. 24, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi said at the Strategic Development Goals summit at the United Nations that his country has been consistently working in order to reduce poverty and to reach its U.N. 2030 sustainable development objectives.

Wang listed all the progress made in various areas and explained that China has meaningfully diminished poverty and improved its people’s health conditions, along with pushing for green development.

"China is on track to eradicate absolute poverty next year and meet the first Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)," Wang stated. "10 years ahead of schedule."

After achieving a “moderately prosperous society”, President Xi Jinping has announced the next step would be to turn China into the world’s most advanced socialist nation by 2050.