The role of College Graduate Village Officials in poverty alleviation movement in China: content analysis of engagement communication from 2015-2023

Poverty was broadly regarded as a violation of human rights. The Chinese government initiated the poverty alleviation movement in 2015 and declared victory in 2021, reaching a decline of 98.99 million in the poverty population. Outsiders, however, questioned the results. One reason is that poverty is not an arbitrary notion highly tied to national or international contexts. Another reason is that asymmetric information and high monitoring costs brought difficulties for the government in targeting the poor population in local villages precisely. Moreover, the public received statistical results rather than the poverty alleviation process, leading to a lack of public track of the movement. It is necessary to explore the evidence about how the local villages reduce poverty and how the movement engages with the public.
College Graduate Village Officials (CGVOs) are the young university graduates hired by the Chinese and assigned to rural villages. As a unique human capital reallocation program, young village leaders are expected to reach 700,000 and assist the elected village chairpersons or the appointed village party secretaries. The central government hopes that these CGVOs, who are more educated and independent from local interest groups, can help improve village governance and alleviate poverty. In other words, they are the frontline practitioners and play the bridge role between poverty alleviation policy and public engagement in villages. To better publicize and implement the movement, many news reported the achievement of CGVOs, which provide sufficient text material rather than statistics for exploring the process of poverty alleviation. The study explores how the poverty alleviation movement engaged with the public from the perspective of the media report of the CGVOs. This paper selects 227 reports about CGVOs from 2015 to 2023 published by People’s Daily, Farmer’s Daily and China Youth Daily. This study uses a qualitative content analysis method to analyze the report's content two actor framing (collective and personal), three themes (accomplishments, responsibilities, and challenges) and the public engagement communication strategy (affective commitment, positive affectivity, and empowerment). This study holds significant value in two aspects: First, it provides concrete evidence of how the local government is engaging with the village public in the poverty alleviation movement, shedding light on the effectiveness of the strategies employed. Second, the efforts of CGVOs reflect the governance of grassroots politics, a crucial aspect that can be further understood and improved through this research. The findings of this study can potentially influence future poverty alleviation policies and strategies, making it a valuable contribution to the field.