Closing Remarks by Tan Weiping, Deputy Director General of IPRCC

Closing Remarks at “Global Partnerships for Poverty Reduction”

Tan Weiping, Deputy Director General, International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC)

April 28, 2017, Rome, Italy

Your excellencies, partners and friends,

I would like to thank our host the Directorate General for Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to our partners FAO, IFAD and CIIC for all the work that led to this event and to the audience from research institutes and from the Universities of Rome, “La Sapienza,” “Tor Vergata,” and “Roma Tre” for being here today. Thanks also to our media friends fro covering the event and helping us to give more visibility to the themes of poverty eradication and inclusive growth.

As Ambassador Sebastiani said in his opening remarks, the world has come a long way in reducing poverty, but if we want to achieve complete poverty eradication, the needs of those who are more marginalized need to be addressed in a concerted effort. That means that each of us plays a major role in making that goal achievable. Making every citizen whether in the public or private sector feel responsible for eradicating poverty and doing everything that it takes like we are doing in China is key to success.

China is tackling poverty in a systematic and well-structured way. For example, Mr Li gave us clear highlights of how ICT is being incorporated in the Internet Plus plan of the Government of the People’s Republic of China to completely eradicate poverty and reach people even in the most remote areas of the country. China’s achievements have benefited from these well-thought policies of the Communist Party of China.

I think that it is also key to understand, as Mr Ashwani Muthoo of IFAD emphasised, that there are still almost 800 million people living in poverty globally and that three-quarters of those people are living in rural areas. So addressing rural poverty and making sure that no one near of far is left behind is essential to achieve the eradication of poverty.

Thank you to Benjamin Davis of FAO for highlighting that even though the number of extreme poor has declined by 58%, the number of malnourished has been reduced by only 21%. This means that we need to do more to achieve the zero-hunger global goal. China has already achieved zero hunger, but we are interested in learning how to address malnutrition. I totally agree, as Dr Davis said, that reaching SDG 1 and 2 are interdependent, and that you cannot reach one without reaching the other.

We as IPRCC are happy to be working with FAO and IFAD in developing and implementing together initiatives that contribute to the achievement of SDG1 and SGD2. China just signed a 5 million dollar agreement with IFAD for South-to-South cooperation, and we are busily working with FAO’s Strategic Program for Rural Poverty Reduction. We are eager to continue our collaboration with these two agencies in developing further the Global Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth Portal, the Innovation Lab and finding innovative ways to share knowledge on poverty reduction through the implementation of the FAO-CIIC and IPRCC webinar series and offering more opportunities for offline and online exchanges on poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

We are also looking forward to establishing new channels of cooperation with the Italian Agency of Cooperation and Development and with the Italian Government. We hope that the success of this first visit by the delegation to Italy is a first step towards a very successful cooperation between our agencies and governments.

Thank you.