Impact of Participatory Village Development Planning on Poverty Alleviation in China

Participatory Village Development Planning (PVDP) was developed with the assistance of ADB from 2001-2002 under the request of the Leading Group Office for Poverty Reduction and Development of the State Council of PRC (LGOP). It has been then adopted and soon applied national wide by LGOP as the shift of its poverty reduction strategy from top down county targeting approach to village targeting approach, which marked significance of the transformation of the government poverty reduction approach in the new century. Despite existence of the current political and social structure and predominant top down planning and decision making, the PVDP has indeed resulted in a significant impact on the fund governance and rural democracy. Due to the lack of panel data for quantitative comparison, it is difficult to provide systematic evidence for what impacts have been made, however, the available data and case studies across the country indicates the significant improvement in fund targeting and the poor farmer’s participation in decision making.