2010-09-22 14:43

BEIJING - As world leaders converge at the UN headquarters to review and boost the global efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a fact has become clear that China is taking the lead in this global endeavor.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is slated to attend the high-level meeting in New York on the ambitious set of objectives, presented in the Millennium Declaration following the UN Millennium Summit exactly a decade ago.

Ten years into the arduous undertaking, extensive progress has been achieved in slashing poverty, hunger, disease, maternal and child deaths, gender inequality, environmental degradation and other ills, but advancing steps toward the 2015 deadline vary in different countries.

"China has done its best in realizing the Millennium Development Goals, and is likely to accomplish all the development goals by 2015," said UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang in an interview with Xinhua last week.

"China's achievements have not only improved the quality of life of the Chinese people, but also made significant contributions to the worldwide efforts to realize the Millennium Development Goals," added the senior diplomat from China.

China has every right to be proud. Entering the new millennium, Beijing formulated the grand objectives to build a moderately prosperous as well as harmonious society, which covered all the MDGs. Through years of persistent endeavors, China has gradually reached several of the global targets well ahead of the timeframe.

China is the first country to halve the ratio of the poor to the entire population. "During the past 20 years, among all the people lifted out of poverty across the world, China accounted for 70 percent," said Hong Pingfan, a senior UN economic affairs officer in charge of global economic monitoring.

Along its march into moderate prosperity, China has exerted its not-so-wealthy self to help other developing countries as far as its capacity allows, and become the second largest official aid donor among developing countries only next to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

At a similar MDGs conference two years ago, Wen pledged to provide more assistance to needy countries to facilitate the attainment of the targets, including funding, agricultural technology, training and education programs and clean energy projects.

Official figures showed that by the end of 2009, China had offered economic and technological assistance to over 120 developing countries and made donations to over 30 international and regional organizations. China has so far helped complete more than 2,100 projects in recipient countries and thereby facilitate the work and life of millions of local residents, according to the Chinese Commerce Ministry.

Meanwhile, China has played an active role in maintaining world peace, a precondition for a smooth realization of the MDGs. Among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, China dispatches the most troops to UN peace-keeping missions.

Five years away from the 2015 finish line, China is hammering out its 12th Five-Year Plan to guide its development during the 2011-2015 period. Beijing has committed itself not only to shouldering the historic responsibility for China's own development, but to performing its proper international obligations and delivering its promises on the MDGs.

"The vision set out in the UN Millennium Declaration is being gradually turned into reality in the vast country of China. This is also the most important international responsibility that the Chinese today should fulfill," Wen said at the 2008 meeting.