Since global leaders established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, China has achieved remarkable progress in achieving the grand targets.

As the world's largest developing nation, China has pursued the way of peace and development, adopted policies of gender equality, resource conservation and environmental protection, and taken action to advance the implementation of the MDGs.

The MDGs were established in 2000 at the Millennium Summit in New York. World leaders pledged there to do their utmost to attain the goals by 2015, including slashing poverty, fighting disease, halting environmental degradation and boosting health.

According to UN reports, global progress on poverty reduction was largely due to the reduction of hunger in China.

Since 1990, poverty, especially absolute poverty in rural areas, has been greatly reduced, according to the UN Development Program (UNDP).

China has now achieved the target of halving the number of poor people from the 1990 figure of 85 million, and thus has realized the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty.

An MDGs report issued in June noted that the sharpest reductions in poverty continued to be recorded in East Asia. Poverty rates in China were expected to fall to around 5 percent by 2015.

Some of the MDGs, including those on primary education, have already been achieved in China 13 years in advance. The mortality rate of children under five dropped from 61 per 1,000 births in 1991 to 25 in 2004. The maternal mortality ratio decreased from 89 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 51.3 in 2003.

The girl/boy ratio was 88:100 in primary education and 89:100 in secondary education nationwide in 2003, and women held 20.3 percent of the seats in the National People's Congress, China's legislature, in 2006.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been supporting international development cooperation as a means of narrowing the North-South gap. It also backs maintaining and improving the multilateral trade system to create a favorable trade environment for developing countries.

To fulfil its commitments to the world, China has offered great assistance to other developing nations and advocated building cooperation forums with Africa, the Arab nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific island nations.

China has also offered massive debt relief to 50 poor nations and zero-tariff treatment to 95 percent of the commodities from the most underdeveloped countries in Africa that have diplomatic ties with China.

Despite the negative impact of the global financial turmoil that started in 2008, China has contributed more than 20 percent to the worldwide economy growth.

Wu Bangguo, China's top legislator, in July urged the international community to speed up the MDGs implementation process, saying that cooperation is an effective way to achieve the goals.

(Xinhua News Agency September 19, 2010)