<p>Relative poverty in China has received increasing attention in the past 20 years but its trends and determinants have rarely been analyzed empirically. This study contributes to the literature by applying the budget incidence analysis and sequential decomposition method to estimate the redistributive effects of public and private transfers on relative poverty in China. Utilizing microdata from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2012 to 2020, we construct a sample comprising 170,243 observations. The results highlight the following. First, until 2020, there are above 24% population living in relative poverty in China. Second, the decomposition results suggest that both public and private transfers are generating antipoverty effects, especially public transfers. As far as specific transfer programs are concerned, old-age pensions have the largest antipoverty effect (58.07%), followed by government subsidies (21.08%) and private transfers (16.83%). Third, old-age pensions have generated a relatively larger redistributive effect in the urban area than in the rural area, while in the rural area government subsidies, private transfers and charity donations are more efficient in reducing relative poverty than they do in the urban area. Finally, the redistributive effects of the transfers are highly determined by their budget size rather than their targeting. Our results provide policy implications to increase the size of private transfers to reduce relative poverty in China.</p>