A Framework of Development-Oriented Poverty Alleviation Implementation Projects in Rural China: The Case of Jinggu County
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
The paper discusses the implementation framework and process aiming at poverty alleviation in rural China. Considering the fact that the world is far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, the research problem is vital both for science and practice. Paper may be of interest to the readers, however, before the possible acceptation for publishing in the Agriculture journal, the manuscript needs to be improved. Below some specific comments are given.
Title of the paper
The paper presents the case study of Jinggu County. This should be reflected in the title of the paper.
Introduction
The literature background and the motivation for the research carried out should be presented more clearly. As far as research on poverty alleviation framework and strategies in China is concerned (lines 59-75), the description is too poor. It would be advisable to present the most important achievements in the field in more detail. Special attention should be paid to actions and measures aiming at poverty alleviation in rural areas. Based on the previous studies research gap should be presented, while the novelty of the study should be emphasized. Both motivation and contribution of the study should be indicated.
Materials and Methods
Lines 103-115 – The process of identification of poor households should be described in more detail. The characteristics of the monitored poor households by selection criteria would give a good background for the discussion on poverty alleviation strategies. It would also be valuable to compare poor household in Jinggu County and in rural China as a whole. It is justified in the light of the methodological approach described in the section 2.3.
Results
The section is largely descriptive. It would be valuable to assess the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation projects and funds spent to carry out those projects. Do any indicators to evaluate that effectiveness exist? If not, are the Authors able to suggest their own indicators? Such an evaluation would be highly advisable to give the justification for the Authors’ conclusion that “the implementation of poverty alleviation action (...) was effective and efficient” (lines 482-483). As it is commonly known the effectiveness can be evaluated based on the ratio between the results (outputs) and inputs! Any measure of that kind was not applied in the study.
Section 3.2.3 is too short. This should be reorganized.
Discussion
The discussion with previous studies should be much broader. Studies related to China, as well as other developing countries should be included. It would be valuable to compare their experiences to give some recommendations for policy makers.
Conclusion
It is a good practice to indicate the directions for further research.
Author Response
The paper discusses the implementation framework and process aiming at poverty alleviation in rural China. Considering the fact that the world is far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, the research problem is vital both for science and practice. Paper may be of interest to the readers, however, before the possible acceptation for publishing in the Agriculture journal, the manuscript needs to be improved. Below some specific comments are given.
Comment 1: Title of the paper
The paper presents the case study of Jinggu County. This should be reflected in the title of the paper.
Reply 1: We have changed the tittle to “A framework of development-oriented poverty alleviation implementation projects in rural China: The case of Jinggu County” to reflect the case study county.
Comment 2: Introduction
The literature background and the motivation for the research carried out should be presented more clearly. As far as research on poverty alleviation framework and strategies in China is concerned (lines 59-75), the description is too poor. It would be advisable to present the most important achievements in the field in more detail. Special attention should be paid to actions and measures aiming at poverty alleviation in rural areas. Based on the previous studies research gap should be presented, while the novelty of the study should be emphasized. Both motivation and contribution of the study should be indicated.
Reply 2: We have reviewed more literature and added details of anti-poverty measures from previous studies such as land consolidation, resettlement, and health project (line 74-81). We have highlighted the research gap “lack of systemic framework that holistically aggregate all aspects and help tackle poverty alleviation implementation” and emphasize our research aims (line 87-89, line 94-97). We have also emphasized our contribution that this study could provide framework and experience to help other similar poverty alleviation program implementation (line 105-108).
Comment 3: Materials and Methods
Lines 103-115 – The process of identification of poor households should be described in more detail. The characteristics of the monitored poor households by selection criteria would give a good background for the discussion on poverty alleviation strategies. It would also be valuable to compare poor household in Jinggu County and in rural China as a whole. It is justified in the light of the methodological approach described in the section 2.3.
Reply 3: We have added a few sentences to illustrate the identification process: the identification of poor households involves a mixed top-down and bottom-up process. Officials set up criteria and verify applications through a top-down process, while households file application and discuss who are qualified through a bottom-up process (line 124-128). Moreover, the second paragraph of section 3.1 further explains the identification process details (line 224-236). In the “Discussion” section, we also highlight that our criteria can target real poor households (line 531-535). We do compare the poor households in Jinggu County and in rural China, and the results are presented in section 3.2.3 (line 396-402, Figure 6).
Comment 4: Results
The section is largely descriptive. It would be valuable to assess the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation projects and funds spent to carry out those projects. Do any indicators to evaluate that effectiveness exist? If not, are the Authors able to suggest their own indicators? Such an evaluation would be highly advisable to give the justification for the Authors’ conclusion that “the implementation of poverty alleviation action (...) was effective and efficient” (lines 482-483). As it is commonly known the effectiveness can be evaluated based on the ratio between the results (outputs) and inputs! Any measure of that kind was not applied in the study.
Section 3.2.3 is too short. This should be reorganised.
Reply 4: Following your suggestion, we have added an analysis to evaluate the overall effectiveness of poverty alleviation projects. We detailed the output (total annual income of poor households) to input ratio (cost of projects) calculation in the “Methods” section (line 208-212) and added a Figure and a paragraph to show the results (Figure 7 and line 407-414). The output to input ratios are larger than one and the trend is shifting up, so our projects are overall effective. We also expanded the comparison analysis in section 3.2.3 (line 396-397) and put the effectiveness analysis into section 3.2.3 to make the section longer.
Comment 5: Discussion
The discussion with previous studies should be much broader. Studies related to China, as well as other developing countries should be included. It would be valuable to compare their experiences to give some recommendations for policy makers.
Reply 5: We have added a paragraph in the “Discussion” section (line 523-535) to discuss other poverty interventions from other countries such as Indonesia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru. We compared our study with previous studies, and presented the strengths of our study such as the comprehensive identification criteria for poor household and the integration of different poverty interventions.
Comment 6: Conclusion
It is a good practice to indicate the directions for further research.
Reply 6: We have added a sentence to the “Conclusion” section (line 558-560) to point out that future studies need to continue to track current projects to assess their long-term performance, and promote more similar poverty alleviation projects to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide.
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
1) Congratulation on the results of the process of poverty alleviation.in China; Good management and satisfactory results; The article presents the case study of one region, but it can be repeated in other regions and countries.
2) I propose to show the aim of this study in the Abstract; Is it only to share experiences or to propose new similar programs?
3) Failures for this project are not shown. Unfortunately, there are no interviews with residents. How do they feel about participating in this program? Do they approve of these actions? Are they satisfied?
4) What are the next steps? Will this program continue in the same district? What are the next steps?
5) What will happen when the program support from Central Government ends? Will it continue to be a local government initiative?
6) Several suggestions are given in the article itself.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Comment 1: Congratulation on the results of the process of poverty alleviation.in China; Good management and satisfactory results; The article presents the case study of one region, but it can be repeated in other regions and countries.
Reply 1: Thank you for your kind words, we are very pleased to have your comments.
Comment 2: I propose to show the aim of this study in the Abstract; Is it only to share experiences or to propose new similar programs?
Reply 2: Thank you for this important comment. We would like to share our framework and experience, we also hope to promote more similar poverty alleviation projects to eradicate extreme poverty globally. We revised our sentence in the “Abstract” (line 23-24) to clearly express our hope that more projects would be implemented.
Comment 3: Failures for this project are not shown. Unfortunately, there are no interviews with residents. How do they feel about participating in this program? Do they approve of these actions? Are they satisfied?
Reply 3: The biggest concern of this poverty alleviation program is that the initial investment is so high. We also calculated the output (total annual income of poor households) to input (cost of projects) ratio to see the overall effectiveness of projects (Figure 7 and line 407-414). Although the output to input ratios are not very high, they are above 1 which means the projects are overall effective. We did conduct a field visit and interviewed some villagers in September 2021. We report our observations in the last paragraph of section 3.2.2 (line 383-394): living conditions are improved, people’s mindset is enriched, and local governance is improved. Unfortunately, we didn’t design questionnaire or engage in comprehensive conversations with villagers for scientific analysis. However, based on our observation, villagers are satisfied with the projects and are grateful to all the participants.
Comment 4: What are the next steps? Will this program continue in the same district? What are the next steps?
Reply 4: The extreme poverty alleviation campaign was terminated in 2020, but the “rural revitalization” initiative was launched at the same year to consolidate the achievements of extreme poverty alleviation. All the supportive policies and subsidies will continue for at least five years, and the institution and local teams are still there. The poor households are under monitoring and local agricultural and industrial projects are encouraged. We report this in the Discussion section (line 513-518).
Comment 5: What will happen when the program support from Central Government ends? Will it continue to be a local government initiative?
Reply 5: The support from central government will continue for at least five years as the “rural revitalization” initiative is launched, and the main task will shift from extreme poverty alleviation to rural development. Even the institution name has changed from “the Leading Group Offices of Poverty Alleviation and Development” to “the Rural Revitalization Administration” (Line 511-522).
Comment 6: Several suggestions are given in the article itself.
Reply 6: We have revised the manuscript according to your suggestion: from “...can provide experience to other poverty alleviation programs...” to “...can provide experience to other poverty alleviation programs, and more similar poverty alleviation programs would make a significant contribution to SDGs” (line 23-24), from “per capita GDP” to “GDP per capita” (line 160), and add quotation marks for “old cake” (line 459).
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
I have carefully read through the revised paper and it should be said that Authors addressed all the reviewer’s comments. In my opinion the changes made have raised the quality of the manuscript. However, there is still one remark which could be implemented by the authors before the paper’s acceptation for publishing. Once again, I recommend to describe the monitored poor households by selection criteria. Table 1 includes some basic information but a more detailed picture of the households referring to the criteria listed in lines 120-124 would give a good background for the discussion on poverty alleviation strategies. I will appreciate the Authors’ effort and relevant revision of the paper, if data access allows for this.
Author Response
Thank you for your comment. Based on your suggestion, we have revised Table 1 ( line 193) to demonstrate the basic pictures of monitored poor households: their income (whether their income is less than 1.5 times the monetary extreme poverty standard), health ( whether the health insurance is fully covered or family member was in serious illness in the past three years), education (whether they have financial stress on education or had in the past three years), and housing (whether their houses need to be rebuilt/upgraded or had significant expenditure in the past three years).
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to read the manuscript. The topic is interesting and relevant to AGRICULTURE readership but in my opinion the paper does not meet scientific journal standards.
The proposed paper tells China’s poverty alleviation history, then describes the implementation of poverty alleviation program in China by deeply examining its poverty alleviation approach applied in the county of Jinggu.
The paper is well written with a good use of English language.
It begins with an informative and well-structured abstract, which is then disregarded in the contents of the article: the abstract promises great things (“Scenarios for low-income countries under different poverty alleviation approaches were also analyzed” and “… in this study can provide valuable experience for other developing countries”), but these are not to be found in the article if not barely mentioned in paragraph 4.
The Introduction follows helping the reader to get into the subject immediately. At the end of the Introduction, the authors clearly state the goals of the research.
Having said that, the rest of the article is more of a technical report than a scientific work. I do not find it suitable for publication in a scientific journal. Rather, it should find its place in technical journals or in volumes dealing with poverty alleviation systems as a best practice case. Probably the "experimental" part of the work would be in paragraph 4, but it is poorly developed both in theoretical terms as well as in methodological and practical terms.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and valuable comments. We addressed your concerns as follows:
COMMENT: The topic is interesting and relevant to AGRICULTURE readership but in my opinion the paper does not meet scientific journal standards. The proposed paper tells China’s poverty alleviation history, then describes the implementation of poverty alleviation program in China by deeply examining its poverty alleviation approach applied in the county of Jinggu. The paper is well written with a good use of English language. It begins with an informative and well-structured abstract, which is then disregarded in the contents of the article: The abstract promises great things (“Scenarios for low-income countries under different poverty alleviation approaches were also analyzed” and “… in this study can provide valuable experience for other developing countries”), but these are not found in the article if not barely mentioned in paragraph 4.
Response: We appreciate the view of the Reviewer. However, every country has its own unique social, economic, and ecological conditions. Therefore, each country has her own specific approaches toward poverty alleviation in reality. Our paper provides a specific framework, process and experience of China’s poverty alleviation implementation, which developing countries may consider and modify for suitable development-oriented strategies. When developing countries start to make their own poverty alleviation plans, our framework and implementation experience could help them and that is the main value of this paper we argue. Moreover, this paper is already long, thus we cannot use too much words on the “scenarios” section that based on uncertainty.
COMMENT: The Introduction follows helping the reader to get into the subject immediately. At the end of the Introduction, the authors clearly state the goals of the research. Having said that, the rest of the article is more of a technical report than a scientific work. I do not find it suitable for publication in a scientific journal. Rather, it should find its place in technical journals or in volumes dealing with poverty alleviation systems as a best practice case.
Response: This paper is submitted to a special issue “Developing the Evidence Base for Rural Development Policies and Interventions to Address Novel and Emerging Societal Problems” and we trust that our paper provides an evidence-based intervention paper in rural development that is suitable for this special issue.
COMMENT: Probably the "experimental" part of the work would be in paragraph 4, but it is poorly developed both in theoretical terms as well as in methodological and practical terms.
Response: As presented above, the comprehensive analysis of the scenarios is not the focus of this paper. We assume that developing countries adopt a development-oriented poverty alleviation plan and have a similar implementation result trajectory as Jinggu County to show a possible prospect. Moreover, Figure A1 in appendix describes our calculation details.
Reviewer 2 Report
This study aims to tackle the important issue of poverty eradication for the developing countries. The experience of China’s poverty alleviation experience provides valuable information for developing countries’ implementation of the poverty alleviation programs and policies. My comments are as the following:
- According to the World Bank, international extreme poverty line is $1.90 per day per capita (2011 PPP). However, the caption of Figure 1 is “Extreme poverty (US$1.9/capita/day, 2010 PPP) population in the past ten years, …”. Please make the correction such that the information provided is correct.
- In lines 94-95, it was indicated that “Just like islands in oceans, these impoverished counties are isolated in mountainous areas (Figure 2). I don’t think Figure 2 is capable of illustrating if the impoverished counties are isolated in mountainous areas or not. Please double check for the consistency of the text and the information provided in Figure 2.
- Description of the rules to identify the poor households appeared in three places, which I found problems with:
(123-124) “Poor households were identified by their income and other basic needs such as food, clothing, education, health, and housing.” -> What are the monetary equivalence of “basic needs such as food, clothing, education, health, and housing”? Qualification rules used to identify the poor need to be in monetary terms, otherwise it is not implementable in reality.
(239-243) “This data on monitoring poor households and individuals covered not only extreme poor households and individuals but also the vulnerable households and individuals that earned less than 1.5 times the monetary extreme poverty standard or had other difficulties such as housing and health problems.” Similarly, “other difficulties such as housing and health problems” is too vague to be used as some qualification rule.
(271-273) “Based on the standards that included adequate income, “two no-worries”, and “three guarantees”, rural households were separated into poor and non-poor house-holds”. -> According to Figure 3,“two no-worries” refers to food and clothing, and “three guarantees” refers to education, health and housing. Similar to the aforementioned rules for identification of poor households or individuals in lines 123-124 and lines239-243, the qualification rules in lines 271-273 present similar problem that these rules or standards are not in monetary terms and thus are not implementable in reality.
- In 3.4 Comparison of the poor group and the control groups, this study specify the poor group in Jinggu county as the treatment group, and all of rural China as the control groups and conduct a difference-in-difference (DID) analysis. I think there is a serious flaw of design in this DID analysis since the poverty alleviation programs is not specifically applied to Jinggu county but rather to all the rural areas in China. Methodologically speaking, the control group needs to be the population that is not benefited from the poverty alleviation program.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and valuable comments. We addressed your concerns as follows:
COMMENT: According to the World Bank, international extreme poverty line is $1.90 per day per capita (2011 PPP). However, the caption of Figure 1 is “Extreme poverty (US$1.9/capita/day, 2010 PPP) population in the past ten years…”. Please make the correction such that the information provided is correct.
Response: We appreciate the view of the reviewer in this observation. The international extreme poverty line is $1.9 per day per capita in 2011 PPP and the Chinese national extreme poverty line is ï¿¥2300 per day per capita in 2010 PPP. So, we have corrected them throughout the article.
COMMENT: In lines 94-95, it was indicated that “Just like islands in oceans, these impoverished counties are isolated in mountainous areas (Figure 2). I don’t think Figure 2 is capable of illustrating if the impoverished counties are isolated in mountainous areas or not. Please double check for the consistency of the text and the information provided in Figure 2.
Response: We appreciate the observation. Figure 2 is mainly illustrating the distribution of developing counties in China, so we put it at the end of the sentence “Impoverished counties are unequally distributed…”.
COMMENT: “Poor households were identified by their income and other basic needs such as food, clothing, education, health, and housing.” -> What are the monetary equivalence of “basic needs such as food, clothing, education, health, and housing”? Qualification rules used to identify the poor need to be in monetary terms, otherwise it is not implementable in reality.
Response: The authors appreciate your effort in reviewing our article. In reality, “food” and “clothing” are covered by the monetary national extreme poverty line; however, education is judged by whether the nine-year compulsory education is guaranteed for poor family children, health is judged by whether all family members are covered by the health insurance and whether any family member is in serious illness, and housing is judged by whether they have safe houses. Since there are working teams in each village, those rules are implementable in reality. We have, therefore, further explained the terms in the manuscript (the second paragraph in section 2.2).
COMMENT: “This data on monitoring poor households and individuals covered not only extreme poor households and individuals but also the vulnerable households and individuals that earned less than 1.5 times the monetary extreme poverty standard or had other difficulties such as housing and health problems.” Similarly, “other difficulties such as housing and health problems” is too vague to be used as some qualification rule.
Response: Thank you for this observation. Here, “housing” means whether their houses are safe (according to the local policy, there are four categories of unsafe houses: A, B, C, D. A and B means the house is severely damaged and not suitable for stay, so they will rebuilt the house. C and D means the house is partial functional, so they will repair the house), and “health problems” means if there is any family member in serious illness such as cancer and leukemia. We have explained these qualification rules in the second paragraph of section 3.1.
COMMENT: “Based on the standards that included adequate income, “two no-worries”, and “three guarantees”, rural households were separated into poor and non-poor house-holds”. -> According to Figure 3,“two no-worries” refers to food and clothing, and “three guarantees” refers to education, health and housing. Similar to the aforementioned rules for identification of poor households or individuals in lines 123-124 and lines239-243, the qualification rules in lines 271-273 present similar problem that these rules or standards are not in monetary terms and thus are not implementable in reality.
Response: We appreciate the observation. As we explained above, grass root teams in villages can handle these non-monetary qualification rules in reality. Further, these non-monetary standards are essential for the poor compared with the only monetary standard.
COMMENT: In 3.4 Comparison of the poor group and the control groups, this study specify the poor group in Jinggu county as the treatment group, and all of rural China as the control groups and conduct a difference-in-difference (DID) analysis. I think there is a serious flaw of design in this DID analysis since the poverty alleviation programs is not specifically applied to Jinggu county but rather to all the rural areas in China. Methodologically speaking, the control group needs to be the population that is not benefited from the poverty alleviation program
Response: We really appreciate this observation. We agree that the control groups are not ideal since the poverty alleviation program was applied to about 56 million people in 832 poor counties in 2015 while the total rural population was about 590 million in 2015. Therefore, the comparison can still basically illustrate the outcome of poverty alleviation treatment. Moreover, this control group is the best that we can find. We added explanation in the manuscript in the first paragraph of section 3.4.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for this highly interesting paper describing the framework and implementation of poverty alleviation policy by presenting the regional activities and outcomes in the mountain area of South-West China (Jinggu county in Yunnan province). It is a clear and impressive report how poverty (measured by the poverty line of 1.9 US$) could be „eliminated“ over a five year period of intensive cross-sectoral activities. As such it addreses the first two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and points to a strategy how to contribute effectively towards achieving these SDGs in a short period.
This seems a valuable good practice example that is based on the quantitative assessment of income improvement and a series of accompanying analysis of development drivers through infrastructure, education, access and participation development. On account of this vast set of aspects covered in the paper, it obviously has to restrict the presentation to outcome measures and can only engage to a very limited extent in analysis and arguments about implementation details, local and regional activities and changes in perceptions of the region’s population.
Yet, it might be interesting to discuss these aspects in more detail, to enhance understanding of the process and include less visible aspects in the assessment. In particular, a more in-depth exploration of the meaning of poverty alleviation for local population, the distributional effects and changes in inequality of society, the altered living conditions, and the probability that this positive outcome is sustained into the future would be appreciated. It is taken into account that the paper starts to consider future developments at the end of the text by elaborating on the future development of poverty occurence in the region. I assume this discussion on more visible effects could be strengthened (and would add to the global value of the paper).
Several other major comments:
The paper is submitted in the journal „Agriculture“. It also includes one strand of the analyzed activities as improvements in agricultural management or diversification of agricultural activities. It might be useful to describe the role of the sector’s activities as crucial for this region, and probably for many types of rural regions, and regions of geographical specificities, like mountain areas. This is lacking from the current presentation, but the expressive discussion of the crucial role of land use and land management (and its future development) should be an essential part of the paper.
The wide set of different activities taken up require a particular effort and substantial financial means and political support. It is hardly analyzed how support for the approach could be achieved and how the various groups of actors coordinated their intentions. What is discussed in rural and regional development studies as „place-based“ approach might be interesting in this case.
Moreover, inter-relationships to other challenges (of the SDGs and) of rural regions development would be instructive: These include aspects of population development, strategies to cope with abandonment of land and shrinking rural areas, attractiveness of the region, long-term changes in economic activities and employment structure in the region, as well as provision of ecosystem services, ecological performance and sustainable use of natural resources. I am aware this is not the focus of the paper, but large-scale strategies like poverty alleviation are inherently interlinked with so many aspects.
The success of the poverty alleviation should also have effects on the notion of „normal people“ with regard to self-assessment and valuation of the region and the inhabitants. Other relevant research is often speaking of the difficulty to overcome negative stereotypes of people in situations at risk of poverty, of „stigma“, or detrimental „narratives“ on those (remote) regions.
A last aspect is that replication to other countries is referred to in the last paragraph as „a suitable strategy for other developing countries“. Actually, this is an interesting consideration and leads to discussion on the particular processes that enabled the successful development. To enhance learning processes one might wish to extend on obstacles, specific local and regional conditions, national priorities and framework assumptions to act as foundations of regional activities, socio-cultural legacy and aspects of social innovation, participation and institutional reforms to enable successful and resilient policy implementation.
Beyond these comments, I’d wish that global literature on rural and regional policy approaches tackling development of remote areas, and addressing procedural features of respective policy actions and programs is included through some additional references.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and valuable comments. We addressed your concerns as follows:
COMMENT: This seems a valuable good practice example that is based on the quantitative assessment of income improvement and a series of accompanying analysis of development drivers through infrastructure, education, access and participation development. On account of this vast set of aspects covered in the paper, it obviously has to restrict the presentation to outcome measures and can only engage to a very limited extent in analysis and arguments about implementation details, local and regional activities and changes in perceptions of the region’s population.
Yet, it might be interesting to discuss these aspects in more detail, to enhance understanding of the process and include less visible aspects in the assessment. In particular, a more in-depth exploration of the meaning of poverty alleviation for local population, the distributional effects and changes in inequality of society, the altered living conditions, and the probability that this positive outcome is sustained into the future would be appreciated. It is taken into account that the paper starts to consider future developments at the end of the text by elaborating on the future development of poverty occurrence in the region. I assume this discussion on more visible effects could be strengthened (and would add to the global value of the paper).
Response: The authors thank you for the observation. Table A1 in the appendix describes more activities in Jinggu County, which may help audiences understand more implementation details. We have added a paragraph to further discuss the implication of poverty alleviation campaign for local people (the last paragraph of section 3.3). We have also extended the eighth paragraph of section 5 to cover more aspects for future development.
COMMENT: The paper is submitted in the journal “Agriculture”. It also includes one strand of the analyzed activities as improvements in agricultural management or diversification of agricultural activities. It might be useful to describe the role of the sector’s activities as crucial for this region, and probably for many types of rural regions, and regions of geographical specificities, like mountain areas. This is lacking from the current presentation, but the expressive discussion of the crucial role of land use and land management (and its future development) should be an essential part of the paper.
Response: We appreciate the comment and have added a paragraph to emphasize the importance of agricultural development in poverty alleviation and rural development (see paragraph 5 of section 5).
COMMENT: The wide set of different activities taken up require a particular effort and substantial financial means and political support. It is hardly analyzed how support for the approach could be achieved and how the various groups of actors coordinated their intentions. What is discussed in rural and regional development studies as “place-based” approach might be interesting in this case.
Response: We appreciate the observation. Since poverty alleviation involves many aspects which are different from place to place, we therefore added one paragraph (paragraph 9 of section 5) to recommend that poverty alleviation measures need to be place-based.
COMMENT: Moreover, inter-relationships to other challenges (of the SDGs and) of rural regions development would be instructive: These include aspects of population development, strategies to cope with abandonment of land and shrinking rural areas, attractiveness of the region, long-term changes in economic activities and employment structure in the region, as well as provision of ecosystem services, ecological performance and sustainable use of natural resources. I am aware this is not the focus of the paper, but large-scale strategies like poverty alleviation are inherently interlinked with so many aspects.
Response: Poverty is indeed inter-linked to many other issues such as population, employment, economic structure, land use, and environment. Thus, we have briefly described these social, economic, and ecological aspects in the paragraph 9 of section 5 to highlight the relationships between poverty and other aspects.
COMMENT: The success of the poverty alleviation should also have effects on the notion of “normal people” with regard to self-assessment and valuation of the region and the inhabitants. Other relevant research is often speaking of the difficulty to overcome negative stereotypes of people in situations at risk of poverty, of “stigma”, or detrimental “narratives” on those (remote) regions.
Response: We agree with the comment and in the second paragraph of section 5, we have expanded the discussion to emphasize the necessaries of overcoming the stigma that unfairly put onto the poor.
COMMENT: A last aspect is that replication to other countries is referred to in the last paragraph as “a suitable strategy for other developing countries”. Actually, this is an interesting consideration and leads to discussion on the particular processes that enabled the successful development. To enhance learning processes one might wish to extend on obstacles, specific local and regional conditions, national priorities and framework assumptions to act as foundations of regional activities, socio-cultural legacy and aspects of social innovation, participation and institutional reforms to enable successful and resilient policy implementation.
Response: Again, we appreciate this observation and agree that each country, in implementing poverty alleviation programs or other rural development programs, should follow a specific process that takes into account its own conditions, priorities and institutional characteristics. We have added a few sentences in the last paragraph of section 5 to suggest that other countries may need to develop their own approaches based on their conditions although they can borrow some experience from Chinese poverty alleviation program.
COMMENT: Beyond these comments, I’d wish that global literature on rural and regional policy approaches tackling development of remote areas, and addressing procedural features of respective policy actions and programs is included through some additional references.
Response: Following on your valuable suggestion, we have reviewed more literature and added 13 references in the article.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I am sorry, but in my opinion, despite the improvements and additions made, the article continues to be a technical report. This is not to say that it is not of value, indeed it is well done, defined, thorough, but it remains a report that may be useful to policy-makers not to the scientific community to which the journal is addressed. Although it is very relevant to the call for the special issue "Developing the Evidence Base for Rural Development Policies and Interventions to Address Novel and Emerging Societal Problems", the paper lacks a theoretical framework and research hypotheses, which makes it a report. which describes an experience of China’s poverty alleviation implementation.
Author Response
COMMENT: the article continues to be a technical report. This is not to say that it is not of value, indeed it is well done, defined, thorough, but it remains a report that may be useful to policy-makers not to the scientific community to which the journal is addressed. Although it is very relevant to the call for the special issue "Developing the Evidence Base for Rural Development Policies and Interventions to Address Novel and Emerging Societal Problems", the paper lacks a theoretical framework and research hypotheses, which makes it a report which describes an experience of China’s poverty alleviation implementation.
Response: We respect the Reviewer's opinion. To support our scientific manuscript, we prepare a chart (see the attachment) to provide a better understand of our study design for the readers of the Journal. We rewrite our Abstract and add statements to clearly demonstrate our research theoretical framework and hypotheses (line12-17 and line 120-124). We are confident that our manuscript is scientifically based on a system approach (Figure 3) to poverty alleviation in China. Our manuscript investigated the implementation of the Framework and analyzed its contribution to poverty alleviation of smallholder farmers and community development in China (Jinggu County) through both quantitative and qualitative methods. We presented our analysis and conclusion by using data sets collected for five years (2016-2020). In Section 3.4, we have compared the poor group to Jinggu County and rural China as a control group. The results show that the poverty alleviation program in China provided benefits to the poor.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The revision addressed some of my first-round comments. However, there are still two places need further clarification:
(Line 125) Need to specify the identification rule for “food” and “clothing”.
(Lines 376-378) “difference-in-differences were 4,147 and 3,178 Yuan (US$ 601 and 461 in 2020 exchange rate) when compared with the whole of Jinggu County and rural China, respectively.” Please present your regression estimates of the mean difference between groups. That is, you need to elaborate more on how “4,147 and 3,178 Yuan” are calculated or estimated. By the way, is “Yuan” RMB? If yes, you need to change the term.
Author Response
COMMENT: (Line 125) Need to specify the identification rule for “food” and “clothing”.
Response: Thank you for your valuable observation. We have explained the terms “food” and “clothing” as “whether they stored enough food or their income could afford to buy enough food” and “whether they had adequate clothes already or their income could afford to buy clothes” respectively (line 129-132).
COMMENT: (Lines 376-378) “difference-in-differences were 4,147 and 3,178 Yuan (US$ 601 and 461 in 2020 exchange rate) when compared with the whole of Jinggu County and rural China, respectively.” Please present your regression estimates of the mean difference between groups. That is, you need to elaborate more on how “4,147 and 3,178 Yuan” are calculated or estimated. By the way, is “Yuan” RMB? If yes, you need to change the term.
Response: We are grateful to this important point for clarification and consistency. We have added the estimation details “the difference-in-difference was estimated by the equation D=(YT,2020-YT,2015)-(YC,2020-YC,2015), where YT,2020 meant the income of treatment group in 2020; likewise, YC,2015 meant the income of control group in 2015” in our manuscript (line 384-386). Moreover, we have replaced Yuan to RMB throughout the paper.
Reviewer 3 Report
As I can see from your responses to the comments of the first round of reviews, all the issues addressed there have been taken up to some extent in this revised version. Thank you for dealing carefully with the respective comments and thereby providing hopefully additional arguments in the paper.
My discussion went in some parts further, addressing dynamic views and international divergent perspectives on transferability of processes, and underestimation of complexity in the described approach. I assume some of those issues might appear due to short presentation of the manifold activities and adaptations in the case study region and other rural areas of China.
Except for some final chackes of the added text I approve that this revised version shows substantial improvements.
Author Response
COMMENT: As I can see from your responses to the comments of the first round of reviews, all the issues addressed there have been taken up to some extent in this revised version. Thank you for dealing carefully with the respective comments and thereby providing hopefully additional arguments in the paper.
My discussion went in some parts further, addressing dynamic views and international divergent perspectives on transferability of processes, and underestimation of complexity in the described approach. I assume some of those issues might appear due to short presentation of the manifold activities and adaptations in the case study region and other rural areas of China.
Except for some final checks of the added text I approve that this revised version shows substantial improvements.
Response: Thank you for your additional valuable comments. We agree that any approach in one place may not fully solve the problem in other places, given the diverse and dynamic world. Thus, we may need to localize policies and use our innovation, based on system approach, to solve local problems. Moreover, we have checked the added text.
