Backgrounder: What China has done for UN Millennium Development Goals

World leaders on Friday adopted a sustainable development agenda which outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for global development over the next 15 years.

The ambitious and forward-looking SDGs basically redefine how the world works together to end poverty, promote prosperity, and combat climate change. The SDGs will replace UN's historic Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which are going to expire at the end of this year.

Since the adoption of the MDGs, "China has contributed to global endeavor for poverty eradication, accounting for two-thirds of the world's reduction in extreme poverty," Wu Hongbo, UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, has said.

The retiring MDGs, agreed by 189 UN member states in 2000, quantified eight targets, ranging from poverty eradication, women empowerment, child mortality reduction to combating AIDS and global partnership development, to address the needs of the world's poorest.

According to a final UN report on the MDGs, though the ambitious goals are not fully met, the world has attained a major achievement of reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty --those who lived on less than 1.25 U.S. dollars a day -- by half.

"We can say that without China's contribution, the international community could hardly achieve the target of halving the extremely poor population by 2015," he told Xinhua.

According to a report published jointly by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UN presence in China, the poverty-stricken people in China have decreased by 439 million, from 689 million in 1990 to 250 million in 2011.

The report on China's Implementation of the MDGs (2000-2015) also said the country has already met the UN goals of reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds and reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters.

"These are important indicators to measure development, and can also be counted as China's contributions to the international community on development," Wu said.

Born in 1952, Wu, a Chinese diplomat, was appointed as the UN under-secretary-general in 2012. His job is to guide the UN secretariat support for the wide-ranging work related to the SDGs and sustainable development financing where he has overseen the substantive services to a number of inter-governmental processes.

This year in July, Wu acted as the secretary-general for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

"When I was in Ethiopia for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, I saw China constructing a railway road in that land-locked country all the way to port of Djibouti," Wu said. "That impressed me a lot."

Sharing what he saw in Ethiopia, Wu mentioned that China has also been helping the country with several infrastructure projects such as construction of highway, wind power plants and also urban light rail, which have provided the country with fundamental support.

"These are quite common in China, but they are all new to this African country," he said, adding that China's presence in Ethiopia is just part of its contribution to the world's sustainable development within the framework of South-South Cooperation.

According to the report on China's implementation on MDGs, China has provided help to more than 120 developing countries in their efforts to achieve the goals. It has exempted due zero-interest loans owed by heavily-indebted poor countries and least developed countries to China six times, amounting to a total of 30 billion RMB (approximately 5 billion U.S. dollars).

It is widely recognized that China has been offering its support to countries in need to promote global sustainable development, Wu noted. "And I believe in the future China will continue to help developing countries within its capacity."

"I believe over the next 15 years, China and China's enterprises can continue to make a difference," he said. Enditem