Poverty-relief numbers best evidence of CPC's social priorities, expert says

To put into perspective the significance of 718 million people, the number is larger than the population of the European Union and Russia combined. It is more than twice the population of the United States, or 10 percent of the planet's entire population.

It is also the number of people lifted out of poverty by China between 1981 and 2015, according to data from the World Bank.