UN: economic growth has not defeated poverty

Beijing  (AsiaNews/SCMP) --  Aiming for economic growth alone is no longer the best way to reduce poverty.  This is what Khalid Malik, coordinator for U.N. agencies in Beijing, maintains, highlighting the great disparity of development in the country's interior and the need to carry out more substantial and better gauged reforms, in light of sudden and uncontrolled market liberalization.  In 2003, China's GNP increased by 9.1%.

Malik noted that economic growth was one of the factors that caused huge losses of workable land, compromising the income of farmers.  He invited the government to suspend taxes agricultural over the next 5 years; such taxes have been a source of frustration for farmers and an injustice on the part of leaders.  Taxes on farming account for only 1% of national revenue, but are a heavy burden for farmers, given the poverty afflicting rural areas.

According to this U.N. official, to achieve real and sustainable development, the government ought to deal, above all, with the needs of the poor, by investing in health care, education and the creation of new jobs.  Malik affirms that "to resolve these problems, China's development policies should be geared more toward the poor...Policies that aim only at economic growth often become an advantage for the élite only and in many cases only worsen conditions for the poor."

Nevertheless, the U.N. recognized China's unprecedented progress toward the Millennium Development Goal which aims to cut poverty by one half within 2015.  In only two decades, China's human development index went from 0.52 (in1975) to 0.74 (in 2001).  Between 1978 and 2000, the number of poor people living with less than a dollar a day fell from 250 million to 30 million.  At the end of May, the United Nations Development Programme and the Chinese government signed an agreement to set up an international centre for  the reduction of poverty in China. (MR)

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