China looks to boost its middle class as it wraps up Xi Jinping’s anti-poverty drive

China has declared an initial victory in its fight to eliminate abject poverty as it announced that the last 832 of the nation’s nearly 3,000 counties and districts were lifted out of poverty as of late November 2020. The announcement that China had reached the goal set five years ago by President Xi Jinping of “eradicating absolute poverty by the end of 2020”, has raised questions about what goal Beijing will focus on next. Some analysts speculated that China is likely to now aim to double the…