China has made great achievements in the past 30 years of agricultural reform, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) hopes its cooperation with China will continue to grow, IFAD President Lennart Bage has said.

"I'm very impressed by China's development since 1978. Poverty reduction in the last three decades has been the fastest in Chinese history, which seems to be a miracle," said Bage in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"China's poverty rate has gone down from about 30 percent to less than two percent today. The country has reached the first UN millennium poverty goal well ahead of time," said Bage, who attributed the success to the Chinese government's "correct policies and hard work."

"There are important lessons from such achievements for other countries. First of all, the importance of right agricultural policies that allowed farmers' use of land. The reforms that began in 1978 introduced novelty that catalyzed food production and food safety, as well as the development of industry and services," Bage noted.

The IFAD is also impressed by what the Chinese government is doing in addressing the country's current problems, such as urban-rural disparities, regional differences and local inequities, he added.

Stating that China plays a key role in world agriculture, Bage said that the country also faces some major challenges in its future development.

The first challenge for China, as for other developing countries, is to continue to increase productivity because food demand is rising rapidly, he said.

"The second challenge is to adapt to climate change and handle floods, droughts, temperature rises and water scarcity, while the third challenge is to mitigate climate change and address global warming problems," the IFAD chief added.

China has been a member of IFAD since 1981. Describing the IFAD-China cooperation as "strong and long-standing," Bage said the two sides had conducted a great number of successful projects in various areas, including micro finance, credit cooperatives and natural resources utilization.

"Today there are 22 cooperation projects between China and IFAD, involving 600 million dollars of total loans," he noted, adding that these projects have yielded many "tangible results" in poverty reduction and productivity increase.

"China has a great role in IFAD, and the Chinese people are very open in discussing programs and solutions. China can transfer a lot of valuable experience and knowledge to other countries in Southeast Asia and in Africa," he concluded.

(Xinhua News Agency December 22, 2008)