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China’s MDG Progress report

To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

China has been performing exceptionally well in meeting the first MDG. It has brought down the percentage of peopleliving under the poverty line to almost 12% from a whopping 60% in 14 years (Harjani, 2014). In 2010, China was cited asbeing the leader in reducing poverty rates and lifting almost 500 million people out of poverty (The World Bank, 2010).The Government formulated the Outline for Development- oriented Poverty Reduction for China’s Rural Areas in 2011and it has had great outcomes. China defined 3 goals for the attainment of the first MDG in 2013. Firstly, to halve theproportion of people who live on less than $1.25 per day. China achieved this goal in 2014 mainly through providingsubsidies to urban and rural population which direly require it. This program is termed the minimum subsistenceguarantee system and the average rate is at $54 per month per person for rural population and $337 per year for theurban population.

The second goal is to achieve full and decent employment for everyone including the young and the women. China istrying to achieve this aim through three stages. First is to increase vocational training in the education institutes toincrease employment for the young. Second is to provide vocational training to women and implement discounted smallloans to women entrepreneurs especially in the rural sector and empower women to be their own boss. To this end, thegovernment spent $224 billion on the discounted loans and other various projects in 2013. The third stage consists ofprotecting labor rights through various mechanisms such as implementing a collective negotiation system amongst thecorporations and labor unions (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013).

The third goal consists of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger. To facilitate this goal, the Governmenthas initiated many food programs over the past few years and has succeeded in pulling the percentage ofundernourished to 30% to fewer than 15% in a decade (The Economist, 2014).

Hence China is one of the few developing countries who have managed to achieve the first MDG two years before target(Cardone & Yu, 2013). Although China has been immensely successful at reducing rates of poverty and hunger, the sadreality remains that it still houses the second largest proportion of the world’s poorest and 150million people who

remain extremely malnourished (The Economist, 2014), (Harjani, 2014).

To achieve universal primary education

According to the Progress report, China has already met the second MDG through providing universal access tocompulsory and free nine year primary schooling in all areas of China. The Government was able to achieve this throughfocus on funding free education, implementing universal education management systems, empowering localgovernments to improve their schools and restructuring their curricula to emphasize student development in broaderterms than just academic learning. Enrollment rate reached 128% in 2013 (The World Bank, 2013)

Although universal access to primary education has increased, there exist wide disparities in terms of region and qualityacross the regions and the education needs of special children are not being recognized. The poorest and handicappedhave access to the education but the quality is dismal hence efforts are being upped to provide high quality primaryeducation which includes interactive learning, institutes for handicapped children and various other contemporarymethods (Brown, 2014).

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To promote gender equality and empower women

China’s answer to this MDG has been to focus a plethora of mechanisms to bridge the gender gap such as encouragingwomen participation in politics, aiming to correct gender imbalance by launching a social program ‘Care for Girls’ and torevise laws to provide solid foundations for women protection in employment. There are 3 women in government at thestate level, the sex ratio at birth has gone down and various laws introduce to protect the interests of women. The main

emphasis however has been on the grassroots level of this issue which is to reduce gender disparity in primary andsecondary education which China has met which is reflected in the 2012 rates of 47%-49% of all enrollments in primary,secondary and higher education coming from females. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China,2013).

This MDG has been met by China but there remains room for improvement. The major issue seems to be that the sexratio at birth has not decreased significantly enough which implies that the majority mind set is still that of boys beingbetter than girls; which is also reflected in the fact that discrimination on gender remains a very real problem in thelabor market. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013).

To reduce child mortality

China met this MDG in 2013, or in other words, reduced by two-thirds the under five mortality rate over a span of 25years well ahead of the 2015 deadline . According to WHO’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Chinadecreased its under five child mortality rate from 61 per 1000 in 1990 to 12 per 1000 in 2013 (World HealthOrganization, 2014).

The government accomplished this through programs launched throughout China, implementing a basic healthcaresystem, providing legal assistance to women and controlling crime against women and children. China has also been

working on improving its health insurance system to women. Programs include ‘Reducin g Maternal Mortality andEliminate Neonatal Tetanus’ which has been implemented on 900 million people and was allocated a budget of $37million in 2013 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013). Rate of deliveries in hospitalsreached 99% in 2012.

Although the work of the Chinese government is highly laudable, some key concerns remain. The mortality rate variessignificantly with regions, the insurance system still does not cater to the poorest of the poor, the unequal birth sex ratiois improving at a very low rate and immunization is not provided to the unregistered which are a very high proportion.

Comparison with Pak

China, being the largest developing county has managed to increase all rates of development indicators despite the factthat Pakistan is a mere 0.8th of China’s population . It has managed to attain 7 out of 15 of its MDGs ahead of schedulewhich has allowed it to overcome the basic hurdles and focus on attaining an improved standard of living, whereasPakistan has only managed to overcome a few.

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Works CitedBrown, A., 2014. UNICEF . [Online] Available at: http://unicefeapro.blogspot.com/2014/05/china-improving-learning-for-poorest.html [Accessed 9 September 2014].

Cardone, A. & Yu, L., 2013. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations . [Online] Available at:http://www.fao.org/about/who-we-are/director-gen/faodg-in-the-news/detail/en/c/209133/ [Accessed 9 September2014].

Harjani, A., 2014. CNBC . [Online] Available at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101843266 [Accessed 9 September 2014].

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013. CHINA’S PROGRESS TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM

DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2013 report . Progress Report. Beijing: United Nations System in China Ministry of Foreign Affairsof the People's Republic of China.

The Economist, 2014. The Economist . [Online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21604220-growth-has-helped-millions-avoid-malnutrition-it-still-threatens-hold-back-generation [Accessed 9 September 2014].

The World Bank, 2010. The World Bank . [Online] Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/news/extreme-poverty-rates-continue-to-fall [Accessed 9 September 2014].

The World Bank, 2013. The World Bank . [Online] The World Bank Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/country/china [Accessed 9 September 2014].

World Health Organization, 2014. World Health Organization . [Online] Available at:http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/events/2014/china/en/ [Accessed 9 September 2014].