Chinas MDG Progress report

To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

China has been performing exceptionally well in meeting the first MDG. It has brought down the percentage of people
living under the poverty line to almost 12% from a whopping 60% in 14 years (Harjani, 2014). In 2010, China was cited as
being the leader in reducing poverty rates and lifting almost 500 million people out of poverty (The World Bank, 2010).
The Government formulated the Outline for Development-oriented Poverty Reduction for Chinas Rural Areas in 2011
and it has had great outcomes. China defined 3 goals for the attainment of the first MDG in 2013. Firstly, to halve the
proportion of people who live on less than $1.25 per day. China achieved this goal in 2014 mainly through providing
subsidies to urban and rural population which direly require it. This program is termed the minimum subsistence
guarantee system and the average rate is at $54 per month per person for rural population and $337 per year for the
urban population.
The second goal is to achieve full and decent employment for everyone including the young and the women. China is
trying to achieve this aim through three stages. First is to increase vocational training in the education institutes to
increase employment for the young. Second is to provide vocational training to women and implement discounted small
loans to women entrepreneurs especially in the rural sector and empower women to be their own boss. To this end, the
government spent $224 billion on the discounted loans and other various projects in 2013. The third stage consists of
protecting labor rights through various mechanisms such as implementing a collective negotiation system amongst the
corporations and labor unions (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013).
The third goal consists of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger. To facilitate this goal, the Government
has initiated many food programs over the past few years and has succeeded in pulling the percentage of
undernourished to 30% to fewer than 15% in a decade (The Economist, 2014).
Hence China is one of the few developing countries who have managed to achieve the first MDG two years before target
(Cardone & Yu, 2013). Although China has been immensely successful at reducing rates of poverty and hunger, the sad
reality remains that it still houses the second largest proportion of the worlds poorest and 150million people who
remain extremely malnourished (The Economist, 2014), (Harjani, 2014).

To achieve universal primary education

According to the Progress report, China has already met the second MDG through providing universal access to
compulsory and free nine year primary schooling in all areas of China. The Government was able to achieve this through
focus on funding free education, implementing universal education management systems, empowering local
governments to improve their schools and restructuring their curricula to emphasize student development in broader
terms than just academic learning. Enrollment rate reached 128% in 2013 (The World Bank, 2013)
Although universal access to primary education has increased, there exist wide disparities in terms of region and quality
across the regions and the education needs of special children are not being recognized. The poorest and handicapped
have access to the education but the quality is dismal hence efforts are being upped to provide high quality primary
education which includes interactive learning, institutes for handicapped children and various other contemporary
methods (Brown, 2014).

To promote gender equality and empower women

Chinas answer to this MDG has been to focus a plethora of mechanisms to bridge the gender gap such as encouraging
women participation in politics, aiming to correct gender imbalance by launching a social program Care for Girls and to
revise laws to provide solid foundations for women protection in employment. There are 3 women in government at the
state level, the sex ratio at birth has gone down and various laws introduce to protect the interests of women. The main
emphasis however has been on the grassroots level of this issue which is to reduce gender disparity in primary and
secondary education which China has met which is reflected in the 2012 rates of 47%-49% of all enrollments in primary,
secondary and higher education coming from females. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China,
2013).
This MDG has been met by China but there remains room for improvement. The major issue seems to be that the sex
ratio at birth has not decreased significantly enough which implies that the majority mind set is still that of boys being
better than girls; which is also reflected in the fact that discrimination on gender remains a very real problem in the
labor market. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013).

To reduce child mortality

China met this MDG in 2013, or in other words, reduced by two-thirds the under five mortality rate over a span of 25
years well ahead of the 2015 deadline. According to WHOs Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, China
decreased its under five child mortality rate from 61 per 1000 in 1990 to 12 per 1000 in 2013 (World Health
Organization, 2014).
The government accomplished this through programs launched throughout China, implementing a basic healthcare
system, providing legal assistance to women and controlling crime against women and children. China has also been
working on improving its health insurance system to women. Programs include Reducing Maternal Mortality and
Eliminate Neonatal Tetanus which has been implemented on 900 million people and was allocated a budget of $37
million in 2013 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013). Rate of deliveries in hospitals
reached 99% in 2012.
Although the work of the Chinese government is highly laudable, some key concerns remain. The mortality rate varies
significantly with regions, the insurance system still does not cater to the poorest of the poor, the unequal birth sex ratio
is improving at a very low rate and immunization is not provided to the unregistered which are a very high proportion.

Comparison with Pak

China, being the largest developing county has managed to increase all rates of development indicators despite the fact
that Pakistan is a mere 0.8th of Chinas population. It has managed to attain 7 out of 15 of its MDGs ahead of schedule
which has allowed it to overcome the basic hurdles and focus on attaining an improved standard of living, whereas
Pakistan has only managed to overcome a few.

Works Cited
Brown, A., 2014. UNICEF. [Online] Available at: http://unicefeapro.blogspot.com/2014/05/china-improving-learning-forpoorest.html [Accessed 9 September 2014].
Cardone, A. & Yu, L., 2013. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. [Online] Available at:
http://www.fao.org/about/who-we-are/director-gen/faodg-in-the-news/detail/en/c/209133/ [Accessed 9 September
2014].
Harjani, A., 2014. CNBC. [Online] Available at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101843266 [Accessed 9 September 2014].
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 2013. CHINAS PROGRESS TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM
DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2013 report. Progress Report. Beijing: United Nations System in China Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the People's Republic of China.
The Economist, 2014. The Economist. [Online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21604220-growthhas-helped-millions-avoid-malnutrition-it-still-threatens-hold-back-generation [Accessed 9 September 2014].
The World Bank, 2010. The World Bank. [Online] Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/news/extreme-poverty-ratescontinue-to-fall [Accessed 9 September 2014].
The World Bank, 2013. The World Bank. [Online] The World Bank Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/country/china
[Accessed 9 September 2014].
World Health Organization, 2014. World Health Organization. [Online] Available at:
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