In this book, Li Xiaoyun tries to address these questions that attract public attention in today’s China. Drawing on classic and cutting-edge poverty research from political economy, economics and social psychology, Li elaborates on the political and social meanings of China’s recent war on extreme poverty and the institutional set-ups that helped the country successfully escape the poverty trap. Adopting a quasi auto-ethnography of his poverty experiment in a poor ethnic village in China, Li presents an excruciating adventure of how the country and its people fought against poverty from a bottom-up perspective which brings this book alive. A collection of essays and opinion pieces, this book is an “espresso” of Li’s insights and inquiries on China’s chronical and transitional poverty which may interest not only a small circle of poverty researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, but also a wider spectrum of readers who want to understand a real China in development.
