Then the novel coronavirus pandemic tore through the global economy.

China shut down factories in January and February to prevent a larger outbreak and contain the virus, but at the same time it severely damaged employment and production domestically.

Consequently, China's economy shrank by 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to a year earlier. For the first time in decades, Beijing didn't set a GDP target at its annual meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), in May.

Since then, China has been trying to dig itself out of its economic slump, and there are some signs of recovery — though the path forward is still looking slow and painful.

Facing reporters at his tightly controlled annual press conference at the end of the NPC, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang admitted that some Chinese citizens had been impoverished by the pandemic.

"Before Covid-19 struck, there were some five million people living below the poverty line. But because of the disease, some may have fallen back into poverty," Li said. "Hence, we now face a greater task in meeting our goal."

Experts say Xi's chances of hitting his grand goal largely hinge on whether or not Beijing can get the country back to work quickly.

"As long as employment continues to recover or mostly recovers by the end of the year, they're going to come really close to hitting their poverty targets," said Scott Rozelle, co-director of Stanford University's Rural Education Action Program.

"[But] there's just a lot of things that say this is going to be a persistent problem."

A mammoth undertaking

For much of the 20th century, China was one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

Beijing defines absolute poverty as as surviving on less than $324 a year (2,300 yuan), lower than half the World Bank's more commonly used poverty line of just under $700 a year.

As recently as 1990, almost 658 million people were living below the poverty line, by Chinese government standards.

Since then, that number has rapidly decreased. In 2012 the Chinese government announced there were 115 million people living in absolute poverty. With less than 10 million left in poverty at the end of last year, it appeared that China was on pace to accomplish its goal.

Shenjing He, a professor at the University of Hong Kong studying urban poverty, said that although there were only a comparatively small number of people left in absolute poverty, they were among some of the worst affected.

"They are those people who are really suffering for the problem of poverty," she said. "They live in very poor conditions and are usually situated in mountainous areas and very remote places."

The Chinese government has committed to spending $20.6 billion (146 billion yuan) on poverty alleviation in 2020 -— a figure which doesn't include additional funds from local governments and private businesses, such as Alibaba (BABA) and Tencent (TCEHY), which are strongly encouraged to con

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