China Focus: Big data buzz prevents slide back into poverty

GUIYANG, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Late one evening in the rugged mountains of southwest China's Guizhou Province, village official Lei Bingchao's phone buzzed with a message. Notably, this was not from a friend or a colleague, but from an algorithm.

The message signaled a warning that fellow villager Yang Xilong had recently incurred unusually high medical expenses, and it might put his family at risk of slipping into poverty.

Yang and his family had been living and working thousands of kilometers away in east China's Zhejiang Province. This means they had not featured in recent door-to-door inspections in Daba village, his hometown.

But the spike in medical bills generated on the other side of the country was still flagged by a provincial data platform of Guizhou.

When local officials followed up, they discovered that Yang had undergone treatment for a complex eye condition. Even after social insurance reimbursements, the remaining cost of 20,000 yuan (about 2,863 U.S. dollars) was about a fourth of the family's annual earnings, as previously recorded in the platform. With two children still in school, one of them at university, the margin for the family's financial well-being was thin.

"Without timely support, this family could have fallen back into poverty because of illness," said Lei, Party secretary of Daba village, who received the warning. With Yang's household earnings bound to fall and medical bills mounting, annual per-capita net income risked slipping below 8,500 yuan, the threshold used for monitoring households vulnerable to falling back into poverty.

Such risks highlight the challenge facing China after it declared the elimination of absolute poverty in 2021, following an eight-year nationwide campaign that lifted nearly 100 million rural residents above the poverty line. For millions of newly secure households, the challenge has since shifted from escape to stability.

The Communist Party of China Central Committee has released its recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2026-2030), which emphasize the need to consolidate and expand the gains of poverty alleviation and call for the coordinated establishment of a long-term mechanism to prevent people from lapsing or relapsing into poverty.

In Guizhou, the alert that flagged Yang's case is one concrete expression of that approach. It came from Guizhou's big-data platform designed to detect early warning signs of poverty, such as illness, job loss and natural disasters, among rural households, part of a broader effort to prevent hard-won gains from unravelling after China declared the eradication of absolute poverty in 2021. The idea is simple but ambitious, namely to spot trouble before it becomes chronic.

Drawing on data from public security, health, education, civil affairs and agricultural authorities, the algorithm scans for anomalies, like surging medical expenses, school dropouts, or damaged housing or sudden income loss. When thresholds are crossed, alerts are sent to grassroots officials for verification. If confirmed, households are swiftly added to assistance programs.

"The goal is about early discovery, early intervention and early assistance," said Zou Tao, head of the monitoring division at Guizhou's Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. "We don't wait until a household has already fallen back into poverty."

To ensure those warnings translate quickly into help, Guizhou has imposed a strict timetable, requiring that no more than 15 days elapse between the first alert and the delivery of effective assistance.

In practice, the assistant takes the form of a tailored package of measures, such as arranging tuition-fee waivers for children, placing adults in public-service jobs, helping households find markets for their agricultural produce, and securing industrial-development subsidies to encourage new sources of income.

For Yang, the intervention proved timely and decisive. Through the assistance program, an additional over-10,000 yuan was covered by the medical insurance fund. His household was also brought under subsistence allowance support, effectively preventing the family from slipping back into poverty due to medical expenses.

The system also works in reverse. Households facing difficulties can submit applications directly through a WeChat mini-program, reducing reliance on in-person visits and paperwork.

Xu Fei, a resident of Tianxing Village in Xifeng County near the Guizhou provincial capital Guiyang, used the mini-program last year after persistent leaks had made his aging house unsafe. Unsure whether help would arrive, he nonetheless submitted his information online.

"I just thought I'd try," Xu said. "I didn't expect much."

Within weeks, his application was approved. Xu received a 15,000-yuan subsidy to repair the house.

"In the past, people had to make multiple trips, fill out forms and wait," said Chang Zhongyan, an official at Xifeng's rural revitalization service center. "Now, different departments verify information online at the same time. In some cases, decisions can be made in 30 minutes."

For Guizhou, with a population of over 38 million people, such vigilance is not optional but a must. Located in mostly mountainous terrain not suitable for agriculture, this province was once the main battlefield of the anti-poverty campaign.

To reduce the risk, Guizhou has also tightened standards for declaring households "stable." Officials must confirm that risk factors, such as unstable income or medical vulnerability, have been sustainably resolved. Each case is reviewed household by household, with records maintained to prevent premature graduation from assistance.

By June 2025, the province had identified 853,000 people as being at risk of falling back into poverty. Through targeted assistance, roughly 72.8 percent have since been able to stabilize their livelihoods.

Big data is increasingly serving as social infrastructure. For villagers like Yang Xilong, this technology remains largely invisible. However, what really matters is that help arrives before a temporary setback becomes permanent. ■