A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALMONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020
Xu Rudong, a farmer in eastern
China, thought he had left poverty
behind long ago. He turned a
small plot of land into a flourishing
field of leeks, selling enough to
pay for luxuries like fish and meat
for his wife and four children. He
even had money left over to buy
an electric scooter.
Now Mr. Xu is once again strug-
gling to pay for basic necessities
like food and medicine. The eco-
nomic slowdown caused by the co-
ronavirus pandemic has hurt his
income, and severe flooding has
devastated his crops.
“We are poor, poor people,” Mr.
Xu, 48, said in a recent telephone
interview from his home in
Wangjiaba, a village of 36,000 in
Anhui Province. “We don’t eat
meat anymore.”
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is
expected to declare victory in the
next two months in a campaign to
eliminate extreme poverty in the
country. The Chinese economy is
once again gaining strength, and
the Communist Party’s achieve-
ments in reducing poverty are ex-
pected to feature prominently this
week at a conclave of party lead-
ers in Beijing.
Four decades of fast economic
growth lifted most people in China
out of poverty, and the Communist
Party has vowed to help those who
remain at the bottom. Mr. Xi’s
antipoverty drive is focused on
around five million people who
earn less than 92 cents a day,
down from nearly 56 million five
years ago.
Vowing to “leave no one be-
hind,” Mr. Xi has traveled to hard-
hit areas like Wangjiaba to reiter-
ate his commitment.
But the pandemic has exposed
the party’s shortcomings in pro-
viding its most vulnerable citizens
with more than the barest of social
safeguards, especially in rural ar-
eas. And some experts warn that
the government’s response to the
crisis — favoring infrastructure
spending and tax breaks for com-
panies instead of direct aid for
families — may widen China’s gap
between rich and poor, which is al-
ready among the highest in the
world.
While wealthier workers have
largely kept their jobs and assets
during the pandemic, millions of
people on low incomes are work-
ing fewer hours at lower pay, de-
pleting savings and taking out
loans to survive.
“Our society is not fair,” said
Jike Erge, 27, a construction
worker from the southwestern
province of Sichuan. “My dream is
to be rich, but I don’t know if it can
be realized. A stable income and
job are impossible.”
Mr. Jike did not work in the first
half of the year because of lock-
downs related to the coronavirus.
In August, he endured another cri-
sis when severe floods destroyed
his home, valued at about $15,000,
which he had just finished build-
ing. He said he had not received
compensation from the govern-
ment for his losses from the
floods, which affected tens of mil-
lions of people across China and
were the worst in decades.
“We work outside for four sea-
sons a year, but we have no sav-
ings,” Mr. Jike said. After the epi-
demic and the floods, he said, “we
couldn’t be poorer.”
Mr. Xi told a United Nations
meeting recently that China was
“undaunted by the strike of
Covid-19” and would meet its pov-
erty targets on schedule. He has
mobilized millions of officials and
spent billions of dollars to meet his
goal, a politically important mile-
stone for the party before the cen-
tenary of its founding next year.
Chinese experts say the
strength of the government’s
monitoring system will ensure
that people stay on a path to pros-
perity. Local officials, who face the
threat of punishment if they do not
meet Mr. Xi’s targets, maintain de-
tailed lists of the income levels of
poor residents and hand out subsi-
dies, housing and loans to push
them above the poverty line.
“Any groups of people who are
below the standard are put into a
file and recorded,” Li Xiaoyun, a
scholar at China Agricultural Uni-
versity in Beijing who is an advis-
er to the government on poverty
programs, said in an interview.
“Every village knows.”
Yet the response to the pan-
demic has exacerbated many
longstanding problems in the
countryside.
China has for decades treated
rural people as second-class citi-
zens, limiting their access to high-
quality health care, education and
other benefits under the strict
Mao-era household registration
system by keeping them from
moving to the cities. More than 40
percent of the population — about600 million people — lived on less
than $5 a day last year, according
to government statistics.
China’s early efforts to fight the
spread of Covid-19, including
lengthy lockdowns across broad
areas of the country, left rural resi-
dents stranded hundreds of miles
from the factories where they
work. Many were unemployed for
months. Their children also fell
behind, lacking the internet con-
nections or hardware to take part
in online classes.
A recent study by Stanford Uni-
versity’s Rural Education Action
Program found that incomes fell
severely among rural workers
during the peak of China’s out-break in February and March. Ru-
ral residents reported losing
about one-fifth of their income in
those two months alone, at the
same time that food prices and liv-
ing costs were rising.
The central government has
done little to address the pres-
sures facing rural workers during
the pandemic, the Stanford study
found. The government has di-
rected much of its aid to busi-
nesses in urban areas.
With the economy still slow in
many parts of China, rural resi-
dents say they are frustrated that
the government is not doing more
to help improve their financial sit-
uation.Zhou Caijuan, a kiwi seller in
the northwestern province of
Shaanxi, said that her income had
fallen sharply during the pan-
demic and that she was struggling
to pay back tens of thousands of
dollars in debt. She said officials
seemed more concerned with col-
lecting data and taking propagan-
da photos than helping her thrive.
“What are you doing for the
people?” she recently wrote on
Weibo, a social media platform.
“All day you’re calculating in-
comes and not thinking first about
how to help poor farmers sell ki-
wis.”
Ms. Zhou said in an interview
she was exhausted by filling out
paperwork and answering ques-
tions when officials visit her farm
twice a month.
“I’m just very annoyed by being
poor,” she said, adding that the
promise of poverty-relief pro-
grams often did not match the re-
ality. “ ‘Poverty alleviation’ is just
a gorgeous fur coat,” she said.
Many people on low incomes
say they are arbitrarily excluded
from government aid despite liv-
ing in difficult circumstances.
“They could easily fall into pov-
erty and face various depriva-
tions,” said Gao Qin, a Columbia
University professor who studies
China’s social welfare system.
As with any government initia-
tive with heavy spending, the au-
thorities also routinely report
cases of bribery, embezzlement
and favoritism in doling out funds,
drawing calls for stricter
oversight. It is also unclearwhether efforts to fight poverty —
such as programs to help poor
people sell fruits, vegetables and
clothing online — will endure after
Mr. Xi meets his goal.
Mr. Xi faces questions within
the party about “the extent to
which this poverty elimination
campaign is now for real, given
the enormous assault that’s hap-
pened on disposable income,” said
Kevin Rudd, a former prime min-
ister of Australia who maintains
close ties to Chinese officials. He
cited the impact of the pandemic
and trade tensions with the
United States in holding back eco-
nomic growth.
“Many people are wondering,
‘Do I have a job? Has my business
gone bust? And how do I feel
about my future?’ ” Mr. Rudd said.
Two months after Mr. Xi’s visit,
farmers of Wangjiaba say the aid
provided by the government, in-
cluding onetime subsidies of
about $300 and packets of seeds,
has not been enough to offset their
economic losses.
Mr. Xu estimates that he lost at
least $3,000 worth of crops in the
floods, and more because of the
economic slowdown during the
pandemic. With fruit and vegeta-
bles still scarce in his village, he
says he will have to spend at least
$1,500 more on food this year than
he had expected. He plans to sell
his sheep this winter and grow
other crops to make a living.
“Even if you aren’t out of pov-
erty, the country will say you’re
out of poverty,” he said. “That’s
the way it is.”‘We Couldn’t Be Poorer’: Pandemic Hinders China’s Antipoverty Efforts
Farmers in Sichuan Province, one of China’s poorest regions. Around five million Chinese earn less than 92 cents a day, down from nearly 56 million five years ago.ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCKThe financial district in Shanghai. Wealthier workers have large-
ly kept their jobs during the pandemic, but millions with low in-
comes are taking on debt and working fewer hours at lower pay.ALY SONG/REUTERSBy JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZAlbee Zhang contributed research.
LISBON — Long before the co-
ronavirus swept across Europe
this spring, many cities had been
complaining that a proliferation of
short-term apartment rentals
aimed at tourists through plat-
forms like Airbnb was driving up
housing costs for locals and de-
stroying the character of historic
districts.
Now that the pandemic has all
but cut off the steady flow of vis-
itors, many European cities are
seizing an opportunity to push
short-term rentals back onto the
long-term housing market.
In Lisbon, the Portuguese capi-
tal, the city government is becom-
ing a landlord itself by renting
empty apartments and subletting
them as subsidized housing. In
Barcelona, Spain, the housing de-
partment is threatening to take
possession of empty properties
and do the same.
Other city governments are en-
acting or planning new laws to
curb the explosive growth of rent-
als aimed largely at tourists. Am-
sterdam has banned vacation
rentals in the heart of the old city;
a Berlin official warned of a crack-
down on short-term leasing plat-
forms “trying to evade regulation
and the enforcement of law”; and
Paris is planning a referendum on
Airbnb-type listings.
For years, properties rented out
for short-term stays have
snatched away housing units from
local residents in several Euro-
pean cities. Lisbon has more than
22,000 Airbnb listings, according
to Inside Airbnb, which tracks list-
ings in cities around the globe.
Barcelona has 18,000, and Paris —
one of the platform’s largest mar-
kets — has nearly 60,000.
When tourists are plentiful,
renting a property on a short-term
basis can be more lucrative for
owners than a long-term tenant,
something that city governments
say has distorted housing mar-
kets in cities where supply is al-
ready tight. They also accuse on-
line platforms of circumventing
laws put in place to protect local
markets.
“We cannot tolerate that ac-
commodations that could be
rented to Parisians are now
rented all year to tourists,” thedeputy mayor of Paris, Ian
Brossat, said in a phone interview.
Mr. Brossat also said he was hop-
ing to cut the number of days per
year that a property can be rented
through platforms like Airbnb —
currently 120. He accused the
company of breaching even that
rule.
Airbnb denies any wrongdoing,
in Paris or elsewhere. “They’ve
set the rules, and we’re following
the rules,” said Patrick Robinson,
Airbnb’s director of public policy
for Europe, the Middle East and
Africa. “Where there is a vigorous
discussion about the right regula-
tions, we’re part of that conversa-tion, and ultimately that’s for local
politicians to decide.”
The most ambitious initiative is
arguably the one in Lisbon, which
has started signing five-year
leases for empty short-term rental
apartments. These properties are
then sublet at lower prices to peo-
ple eligible for subsidized hous-
ing. The city government has set
aside 4 million euros, or about $4.
million, for the first year of subsi-
dies.
“We entered the pandemic with
a huge pressure on our housing
market, and we cannot afford to
exit the pandemic with the same
set of problems,” said the city’smayor, Fernando Medina.
The program is aiming to at-
tract 1,000 apartment owners this
year, and has drawn 200 so far. Mr.
Medina said he was confident that
the plan would meet its goal, since
a rebound in tourism anytime
soon seems increasingly unlikely
as the pandemic drags on.
“The coronavirus has helped
expose the negative aspects of
Portugal’s recovery from the fi-
nancial crisis, which was driven
by real estate and tourism rather
than a focus on the basic needs of
local people,” said Luís Mendes,
an urban geographer who is a
member of a citizens’ platform
called Living in Lisbon.
Above all, Mr. Mendes said, the
lockdown restrictions used to con-
tain the coronavirus put the spot-
light on the housing imbalances in
Lisbon. “How can you quarantine
if you don’t have a decent house?”
he said. “
However, some homeowners do
not consider the city government
a reliable tenant. Portugal, they
say, has a history of legal uncer-
tainty and sudden rule changes
whenever a new administration
takes office.
“If you look at the track record
of the politicians in Lisbon, it’s an
absolutely hopeless one, of incom-
petence and often corruption,”
said Rita Alves Machado, who
owns three empty short-term
apartments around Lisbon. “The
city owes money all over the
place, and I just don’t believe they
will pay on time or stick to their
own rules.”
The regulation of short-term
rentals has been a drawn-out af-
fair in Europe.
In September, the European
Court of Justice backed cities at-
tempting to crack down on short-term rentals, after supporting a
French court ruling against two
property owners illegally renting
out second homes on Airbnb. The
court had issued a ruling in
Airbnb’s favor last year, saying
that it was an online platform
rather than a real estate company,
which would have required it to
comply with housing laws.
The longer the pandemic hin-
ders travel, the more likely initia-
tives like Lisbon’s are to gain trac-
tion, city officials and local prop-
erty experts say. Until then,
Airbnb has found itself on shifting
ground.
It has delayed plans for a stock
exchange listing, cut $800 million
in marketing costs, laid off 1,
employees and raised $1 billion in
emergency funding. Airbnb also
distributed $250 million to hosts
impacted by cancellations be-
tween March and May.
In Lisbon, occupancy rates for
Airbnb and Vrbo, a short-rental
booking site that was once known
as HomeAway, dropped 50 per-
cent in May from a year earlier, ac-
cording to AirDNA, which collects
vacation rental data.
Miguel Tilli, the co-founder of
HomeLovers, a Portuguese real
estate agency, said he had been
listing as many as 60 new proper-
ties a month in Lisbon — almost
all of which had previously been
rented through Airbnb but were
now open to long-term tenants.
Rental prices in the city have
dropped 10 percent since the start
of the pandemic, but landlords
who had previously let properties
through Airbnb were still resist-
ant to reducing rents.
“Many landlords are acting as if
Covid is somebody’s else prob-
lem,” Mr. Tilli said. “That cannot
last forever.”Devoid of Tourists, Europe’s Cities Work to Reclaim Rentals for Long-Term Leases
Lisbon’s city government plans to rent out empty apartments as subsidized housing. Amsterdam,
Berlin and Paris are also pursuing ways to bring more of their housing to the long-term market.PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESBy RAPHAEL MINDER
and GENEVA ABDULRaphael Minder reported from
Lisbon, and Geneva Abdul from
Paris.
.