Toward Zero Poverty and Sustainable Development with Innovation
2019-09-05 12:04

Remarks by H.E. Huang Xilian

At the Opening Ceremony of ASEAN-China-UNDP Symposium on Innovation in Achieving the SDGs and Eradicating Poverty

Ha Noi, 4 September 2019

 

Excellency Mr. Le Tan Dung, Vice Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs of Vietnam,

Excellency Mr. Nguyen Quoc Cuong , Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam,

Excellency Kung Phoak, Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN,

Ms. Valerie Cliff, UNDP Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon!

It is a great pleasure to visit Ha Noi for the symposium on Innovation in Achieving the SDGs and Eradicating Poverty. I wish to thank the ASEAN Secretariat and UNDP for co-hosting this event with my mission for the fourth year and for your hard work with my team over the months. Special thanks go to the government of Vietnam for its support to make this event possible. Let me extend my warmest welcome to all the guests coming from China and across ASEAN to honor this occasion.

This year’s symposium, focusing on innovation and poverty reduction, reflects the most urgent needs of the region in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Poverty reduction tops the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and remains a priority for most countries in the region. Innovation that brings change to how we live and work can be a new engine for sustainable development and poverty reduction, a tool we must command.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear friends,

The People’s Republic of China will celebrate its 70th birthday next month. Over the last seven decades, the last four since reform and opening-up in particular, China, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, has scored remarkable achievements in sustainable development, especially poverty reduction. I wish to share two stories with my personal experience.

My hometown is a thousand-year-old village in coastal southeast China. The climate is temperate and landscape great.Yet in my childhood, poverty still prevailed. Many fellow villagers often went to bed hungry. But over the past four decades, tremendous changes have taken place. Now urbanized, my village is intricately connected by expressways and high-speed rails to other parts of the country. People own private cars, and live in two-or-three-story houses with nice neighborhood environment surrounded by eco-parks. People are much more better-off than themselves in the past. Many are doing business at home and also abroad, such as Southeast Asia. It is the opening-up policy that has injected vitality to my hometown. There are many more stories like that of my own village all across the country.

My job has brought me to a lot of places in China. There is a case that I have been most impressed. It is Guizhou Province in the less developed Southwestern China. Its deep-rooted poverty and unfavorable natural conditions were once a handicap holding it back. That has been the stereotype when I thought of Guizhou. When my wife and I had a one-week self-driving trip there a few months ago, our journey was uninterrupted all the way from the west to the east, thanks to the perfectly networked expressway system. Each and every county in this province is connected with impressive infrastructure, the quality of which is as good as, if not better than other provinces. For years, Guizhou has been developing digital economy and big data industry, and its double-digit GDP growth rate has ranked among the top nationwide for eight years in a row. For Guizhou, enhanced connectivity is pivotal in the fight against poverty, also a way in which China is helping many other countries around the world to get out of poverty. I’m glad to inform you that we have invited some colleagues from Guizhou to this Symposium, who will share more stories about its endeavor to fight poverty.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Friends,

These are testaments to China’s achievements in poverty reduction. So accustomed to what we have today, my son’s generation gets tired of listening to the stories of shortage and want in the past. The major challenges facing China now has shifted away from having sufficient food and clothing to meeting people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. For 70 years, China never stops its fight against poverty in a single day. Its extraordinary path of poverty reduction has become an epitome of the leapfrog progress in the Chinese economy and society.

In poverty reduction, China leads by example. Guided by the people-centered principle, the Chinese government has been committed to the mission of eradicating poverty, delivering a better life and shared prosperity. Since the start of reform and opening-up, 740 million people have been lifted out of poverty, which is more than 70 percent of the global total. US Senator Bernie Sanders said in a recent interview that China had made more progress in addressing extreme poverty than any country in the history of civilization. From 1978 to 2012, China’s head count ratio plunged to 10.2 percent from 97.5 percent. Since 2012, over 80 million people left poverty behind. The 19th CPC Party Congress made targeted poverty alleviation one of the three critical battles to win over in its pursuit towards zero poverty among rural population by 2020. With this box checked, China will eliminate extreme poverty for the first time in its history, a key milestone for the nation and the world.

The Chinese approach is a proven case in delivering sustainable development goals. China was the first developing country to realize poverty reduction target, a priority among the SDGs, with the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) basically achieved in 2015. Since then, China’s success story has gained wider recognition. Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind with a series of principles, including harmony between man and nature, the value of clean waters and lush mountains, development as the key to poverty reduction as well as the importance to address such issues as the imbalance in development, difficulties of governance, digital divide and income disparity. Guided by the principle of participation, collaboration and common interests, China has followed a path of irreversible poverty reduction through industrial growth and targeted tailored measures for each case, while sustaining growth of the local economy and empowering the locals with means to prosper. The Chinese solutions and pathways of sustainable development have provided important reference for the rest of the world toward zero poverty and common development for all.

China has been an active contributor in global cooperation against poverty. Eliminating poverty is a shared mission of mankind. China is committed to supporting and assisting other developing countries, the least developed ones in particular, in their fight against poverty. In the past 70 years, China provided financial aid of over 400 billion yuan to nearly 170 countries and international organizations and carried out over 5,000 assistance projects overseas, having dispatched more than 600,000 personnel, trained over 12 million from other developing countries and assisted over 120 developing countries to realize MDGs.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Friends,

Poverty eradication remains a daunting challenge for our region and beyond, especially for China and ASEAN countries who are at a critical moment of development. It must be noted that our concerted efforts have yielded rich fruits in recent years, as evidenced by mechanisms such as the ASEAN-China Forum on Social Development and Poverty Reduction and the projects of poverty reduction cooperation in East Asia. We have enhanced policy dialogue to fully tap the potential of poverty-stricken areas, developed new ways of cooperation, and upgraded industrial models, thus reinforcing each other’s poverty relief endeavors. In the meantime, our two sides are also committed to strengthening cooperation in sustainable development, which would be new highlights of growth in ASEAN-China cooperation.

According to the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership Vision 2030, ASEAN and China will work together to implement objectives under the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including poverty eradication in all forms and dimensions, in accordance with respective sustainable development goals. This vision navigates our efforts toward building more consensus and expanding cooperation.

First, we need to foster greater synergy between the Belt and Road Initiative and ASEAN development plans to realize the SDGs and advance poverty reduction.

Second, we need to step up exchanges in innovation, in particular new theories, policies and actions, to propel sustainable development and poverty reduction.

Third, ASEC, UNDP and China need to complement each other by leveraging respective strengths in research, practice, regional cooperation and the networking of people, so that the three of us working together is more than the sum of each working separately.

Fourth, we need to look for new models of practical cooperation. I am happy to take this opportunity to announce that the Chinese Mission to ASEAN, ASEC and UNDP have agreed to implement projects on sustainable development in countries along the Mekong River. And I have no doubt these projects will deliver real changes on the ground.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Friends,

ASEAN-China relations have entered a new stage of all-round development. I look forward to in-depth and insightful discussions at this symposium on how we can work even more closely together to realize the goal of zero poverty, sustained growth and shared prosperity for our region as a whole.

Thank you.

Suggest to a friend
  Print