The End of Poverty and the Taming of Inequality

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.