The Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction in China
Name:Xing Fengfeng Student ID：S07510
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Seku Conde
Minzu University of China
2007-2008 Academic Year
Abstract
As the largest developing country, China has an extremely large poor population in the world, so China is a critical factor and plays an important role in achieving the MDG for poverty reduction. When we now at the midpoint between the adoption of the MDGs and the 2015 target date, we probably want to know what the progress of the scheme is. Answering the following questions helps to clarify the current progress. (1) Has china already met the MDG for poverty reduction? (2) What efforts have been made? (3) What is the next challenges is China facing? (4)What can we learn from the experience and what should we do next. Finally, the conclusion can be drawn that results so far have been mixed. Generally specking, with the efforts of government, NGOs, the UN and so on, China has made remarkable progress in poverty reduction especially absolute poverty reduction in rural areas. China has now achieved the MDG for poverty redaction ahead of schedule, no matter measured by Chinese official poverty line or by “$1 one-day” international poverty line. But the truth can not be ignored, that the achievement we have made is low leveled, unstable, unbalanced, and costs too much, so we still need to pay greater efforts to deal with challenges and address problems. Such as narrowing the growing development disparities, controlling the excessive population growth continually, saving resources and protecting the environment and so on.
Key words: The Millennium Development Goals, poverty reduction, China
INTRODUCTION
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, leaders of government and state from 189 countries reached a historic agreement on a series of eight goals which were called “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”. The eight goals describe a vision for the future– a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants, better educated children, equal opportunities for women, and a healthier environment; a world in which developed and developing countries worked in partnership for the betterment of all.[1] And the MDGs are comprehensive, quantitative, time-bound, which include 18 targets and 48 indicators. All of them provide a framework for development for countries around the world.
In the eight goals, the first one is related to poverty alleviation, which has two targets: halve the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day between 1990 and 2015, and halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between the same period. It’s easy to find that the other seven goals of MDGs are compatible with this one: poverty reduction, which is the base of others. Poverty and hunger is not only a threat to more than 1 billon population survive in the world, but also is one of the major causes of many problems, such as social turbulence, humanitarian crisis, the spread of AIDS and terrorism issues. As the largest developing country, China has an extremely large poor population in the world, the statistic shows that there were 375 million Chinese lived below 1 dollar a day in 1990, accounted for nearly one-third of the world's poor population (1292million),[2] so China is a critical factor and plays an important role in achieving the Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction. Now about 8 years has passed, we probably want to know what the progress of the scheme is, has China already met the goal? If she has, what efforts have been made and what we can learn from the successful experience, furthermore, what is the next challenge China is facing. Correspondingly, if she hasn’t met the goal, what actions we should take to achieve it. The purpose of this paper is trying to answer these questions.
(1)HAS CHINA ALREADY MET THE MILLENNIUM GOAL FOR POVERTY REDUCTION?
Measured by Chinese official poverty line
Different countries have different definitions of poverty and different national poverty lines. China officially drew two poverty lines and adjusted them according to price indexes. The current poverty lines were established in 1999[3]: one is annual per capita income of less than RMB 625 yuan demarcates absolute poverty, and the second one is annual per capita income below RMB 865 yuan demarcates relative poverty.[4] Both of the absolute and relative poor are targeted by China’s current national poverty elimination efforts.
One of the most notable characteristic of China’s poverty-stricken population is that the overwhelming majority concentrated in rural areas[5], according to statistics released by National Bureau of Statistics of China, China’s urban population was about 0.3 billon and urban poverty rate was only 0.4% in 1990, while rural population was about about0.84 billion and the incidence of rural poverty was 9.4% in the same year. [6] So the rural poverty population numbered 85 million in 1990 according the Chinese official poverty line, but after 14 years, that is in 2004 the number decreased dramatically to 26.1 million (2.8% of the rural population). [7] Therefore, it’s obvious that China has far exceeded the goal of halving poverty.
Measured by “$1 one-day” international poverty line
Although China’s official poverty line is about two-thirds of the 1 dollar per day poverty line, even using the latter standard, China has met the poverty reduction goal. In 1990 the number of people living on less than USD 1 per day was approximately 375 million,[8] and in 2004 it dropped to around 131 million (United Nations Statistics Division 2004). Similarly, it’s the reduction of rural poverty population that was the most obvious, as the chart shown below.
source: China’s Progress Towards The Millennium Development Goals 2005
Therefore, many sets of data prove that China has met the Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction ahead of schedule, whether using official poverty line or international poverty line. And there is no doubt that China’s achievement in poverty decrease especially in rural poverty decrease has contributed greatly to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction in the whole world. As Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Director of the Millennium Project said ––at the Millennium Development Goals Forum meeting on June 24th, 2006––that China had the world's largest ever mass poverty eradication and she was a success story in global development strategy.[9]
(2)WHAT EFFORTS HAVE BEEN MADE?
The Chinese government efforts toward poverty reduction
Government wishes and efforts are key factors in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and Chinese government sees achievement of national economic and improvement of the quality of people’s lives as its top priority. The anti-poverty objectives and development plans have been enshrined in the country’s economic development plan. Many pro-poor policies and strategies which are developed and implemented by government have been playing an important role in poverty reduction.
The first strategy is financial support. From 2001 to 2006, the Chinese government has accumulatively allocate RMB70.9 billion yuan from the central budget as special fund for poverty alleviation, and the number increased 6.3% per year on average.[10] In addition, financial institutions in China have also provided strong support for poverty release. For instance, according to China’s MDGs progress report, the Agricultural Bank of China released a total sum of about RMB125.213 billion yuan of poverty relief loans from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2004, and there were RMB91.842 billion yuan among which were concessional loan. By the end of 2004, the amount of outstanding poverty relief loans totaled RMB99.616 yuan.[11]
The second strategy and efforts are focusing on rural poverty alleviation. As mentioned above that overwhelming majority of poverty-stricken population is concentrated in rural areas, to this end, Chinese government made more efforts on rural poverty reduction including providing economic support, developing a number of preferential policies and so on.
The Chinese government allocates substantial funds in rural areas to support agriculture development every year, and the number is in increasing year by year, in particular after 1990, as the chart shown below that the amount of government expenditures for agriculture per rural capita increased form less than 35 dollars in 1990 to about 70 dollars after 8 years.
According to the Outline for Poverty Alleviation and Development of China’s Rural Areas(2001-2010) , the poverty relief loans released by the Agricultural Bank of China, which have been mentioned above, were mainly use to help rural poor population. Besides, the Rural Credit Cooperatives and other financial institutions lent around RMB10 billion yuan poverty reduction loans which were mainly invested to state and provincial designated poverty-stricken countries. [12] Further more, many province or country poor sectors are also actively to make small loans available to farmers. Here is an example, Wenchi village in Gansu Province Huixian set up a “ Wenchi pro-poor development fund management committee” in April 2006, with the support of province and country pro-poor sectors, the committee raised nearly RMB0.6 million yuan to resolve the loans problems for villagers, especially the poor farmers. At present, the foundation has issued loans to 152 farmers and accumulated to RMB58.3 million yuan, a lot of villagers have benefited from these loans. Such as YangJun, an ordinarily farmer in Wenchi village, had [...]
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