The framing is wild (emphasis added):

> The 189 member states of the United Nations set a target to bring the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to half its 1990 level by 2015 ... Economic growth did nearly all the work. A booming China accounted for about two-thirds of the decline

That's one way to put it. Another way is that China set out to intentionally raise 800M people out of extreme poverty as a decades-long, multi-faceted priority and policy goal of the CCP. According to the World Bank [1]:

> China’s approach to poverty reduction has been based on two pillars, according to the report. The first was broad-based economic transformation to open new economic opportunities and raise average incomes. The second was the recognition that targeted support was needed to alleviate persistent poverty; support was initially provided to areas disadvantaged by geography and the lack of opportunities and later to individual households. The report points to a number of lessons for other countries from China’s experience, including the importance of a focus on education, an outward orientation, sustained public investments in infrastructure, and structural policies supportive of competition.

Or, as The Economist put it, "economic growth". None of this is new. Another oft-cited example is Brazil's Bolsa Familia [2].

Back to The Economist:

> None of this is insurmountable, though. As Alfred Marshall, a founding figure of modern economics, once observed, eradicating poverty is less a quandary for economics than for the “moral and political capabilities of human nature”.

That's so weird. We apparently can't blame income and wealth inequality on economics. No, it's a moral and political failure.

[1]: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

[2]: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2010/05/27/br-bols...

One neat trick to end extreme poverty