From the onset of European modernity, the World at large experienced a cross-cultural asymmetry between European territorial expansion and the proper dynamics of rural communities in Asia and Africa. Those societies turned to themselves to manage the sustainability of their high equilibrium track. In that long-term process, they adopted cereal-based agriculture, meridionalized to create rice fields in humid and rich lands, and most of all created a tradition of correspondence between production systems, institutions and governance forms.If one can talk about a Chinese model, it is in the originality of that historic trajectory and the springs of its experience in poverty reduction.Under good government, poverty is a disgrace, said Confucius[1], echoing the notion of a heavenly mandate that summoned the Chinese sovereign to maintain the balance of nature and society.The whole history of China remains a heroic struggle to restore the balances of nature and society.There is therefore a tradition of concern and resolve in the public sphere to tackle and alleviate poverty as a token of good governance.Monsoon Asia concentrates half of the world’s population in valleys and deltas with densities reaching 1,000 inhabitants per km2. These human concentrations cover an area that is barely 1/5 of the African continent with an average rural density of 50 inhabitants per km.[2]Here is a crucial asymmetry that invites a historical cross analysis of poverty reduction between Africa and China.