China's experience in poverty reduction promotes regional development

China, after effectively promoting targeted poverty alleviation and achieving fruitful results, is proactively leveraging bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms to strengthen poverty alleviation exchanges and cooperation with the ASEAN countries in the hope that development will benefit local people. By doing so China has won a unanimous praise from the ASEAN officials and diplomats.

China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership for Regional Poverty Reduction

H.E. Dr. AKP Mochtan, Deputy Secretary-General of the ASEAN, pointed out at the 12th ASEAN-China Forum on Social Development & Poverty Reduction that the issue of poverty is observable in both the ASEAN and China, and both sides have made great strides in poverty reduction since they started bilateral cooperation. “China’s achievement [in poverty reduction] is extraordinary. This is a very true demonstration of China’s success,” he said in an interview with China.org.cn. “When it comes to poverty reduction, one of the very important aspects is job creation. Employment creation could come through investment, through economic activities. We need to be hopeful that the Belt and Road Initiative and the ASEAN Connectivity will lead to bigger investment, bigger economic activities, and bigger employment creation.”

the H.E. Dr. AKP Mochtan, Deputy Secretary-Generalof ASEAN.

Dr. Mochtan considered that success stories should be shared with the world. “What we need to have more are success stories. We have to have success stories to share not only between the ASEAN and China, but also to the world. This will be part of our international responsibility and the cooperation between the ASEAN and China,” he said.

Director of Human Development of the ASEAN Secretariat Rodoran Babaran said, “China is a very successful model of reducing its poverty in a very short period. In less than two decades, the economic growth of China has been very outstanding, the size of the middle classes expanded massively and the poverty rates have gone down very, very fast. And that’s why member states of the ASEAN are very interested in learning from China how they did this. Considering China a very large country with billions of people, it’s really interesting how government leadership can spur the development in this aspect.”