China’s sweeping anti-poverty drive has pulled millions out of hardship, but can it last? 

Cabbage farmer Zheng Shuqing, 59, likes to show off the lift in the newly developed apartment block he moved into seven months ago. 

“It’s all electric, these lifts!” he said, bounding ahead to push the button. “It’s so convenient for us old folks.”

The lift dings open to Mr Zheng’s home, a sunny, three-bedroom flat on the ninth floor overlooking the mountains of Chongli in northeastern China. There’s indoor plumbing and heating, a two-burner stove, and a grey-tiled floor so new it gleams.

It’s quite an upgrade from his former hillside cave, and later, as the fields produced more yield, a mud brick home heated by a coal stove, outfitted with an underground potato cabinet, and insulated by hay…

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