China further consolidated its poverty alleviation gains and promoted rural development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

After eradicating absolute poverty in late 2020, China used the five-year period from 2021 to 2025 to secure its accomplishments by focusing on preventing relapse and boosting rural revitalization.

The plan emphasized establishing long-term mechanisms, improving rural living environments, ensuring food security, providing targeted assistance to relocated populations, and developing local industries to increase farmers' incomes and narrow the urban-rural divide.

In 2025 alone, China's employment support policies successfully stabilized the employment of over 32 million people who had previously been lifted out of poverty, preventing a widespread return to hardship. More than seven million individuals were assisted through dedicated monitoring systems.

Agricultural gains were key to this accomplishment. The country's grain output in 2025 reached a record high of approximately 714.9 million tons, exceeding 700 million tons for the second consecutive year. Notably, soybean production reached 20.91 million tons, marking the fourth consecutive year it had remained above the 20 million-ton level.

China's agricultural technology advancement contributed over 64 percent to the sector's growth, marking a significant shift from labor-intensive farming to high-tech, automated, and data-driven methods.

Meanwhile, last year also saw the value-added output of China's major agricultural and sideline food processing enterprises up by 5.6 percent year over year.

As of the end of 2025, rural per capita disposable income had risen 6 percent in real terms to over 24,000 yuan, or about 3,500 U.S. dollars.

China has also made further progress in building more livable and prosperous rural communities, with the coverage rate of sanitary toilets in rural areas currently standing around 77 percent.

By the end of 2020, China officially eradicated absolute poverty, lifting the last 98.99 million rural residents out of poverty over eight years. Over a span of four decades, nearly 800 million people were lifted out of poverty in the country, accounting for over 70 percent of the global reduction in extreme poverty. This achievement met the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development poverty target 10 years ahead of schedule.