Although China has surpassed Japan and Europe to become one of the two locomotives driving the world economy, one should not take it for granted that China will co-lead the world with the United States, said Pang Sen, Vice President and Director General of the United Nations Association of China. It will never pursue supremacy or hegemony because it confronts a variety of challenges in its own development, he said.

Chinese leaders are fully aware of these challenges. China's per-capita income ranks below 100th worldwide. The development of China's urban and rural areas and different regions is extremely unbalanced, with its rural areas, especially those in the west, remaining underdeveloped. China has to contend with resource bottlenecks, high energy demand and environmental damage as well as social problems caused by defects in its market economy and democratic and legal systems. It still has to make strenuous, long-term efforts to achieve modernization and in this process development is always the top priority of the Chinese Government and people, Wen said.

With that resolve, China has made comprehensive social and economic progress over the last several decades and contributed to the realization of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Out of poverty

The MDGs are eight international development goals that world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit in 2001 agreed to achieve by 2015. They include halving extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and developing a global partnership for development.

In less than 30 years, China has reduced the number of people living in absolute poverty from 250 million to 15 million, according to the Chinese Government's poverty standard. The government now provides free nine-year compulsory education, while sponsoring a cooperative health care system for the country's 800 million farmers. Residents practice autonomy in grassroots communities in urban and rural areas, where they directly elect village and community officials.

Statistics released by the World Bank showed that China accounted for 67 percent of the achievements in global poverty reduction over the past 25 years. China is turning the MDGs into reality-the most important international obligation the Chinese should undertake, Wen said at the UN High-level Event on the MDGs on September 25.

According to Huang Yanxin, Deputy Director General of the Department of Policy and Regulation in the Ministry of Agriculture, China is the first country to reach the goal of halving extreme poverty ahead of schedule.

As a responsible major developing country, China has offered assistance to the least developed countries to the best of its ability, Wen said. By the end of June, China had written off 24.7 billion yuan ($3.63 billion) in debts owed by 49 heavily indebted poor countries and least developed countries in Asia and Africa. It had also provided 206.5 billion yuan ($30.37 billion) in various forms of assistance to such countries, of which 90.8 billion yuan ($13.35 billion) was free aid.

China offers zero-tariff treatment to the goods of 42 least developed countries. It has trained African professionals, sent agricultural experts and medical teams to Africa, built hospitals and schools there and provided African countries with free medicine. At the end of last year, China decided to grant African countries 2.377 billion yuan ($349.6 million) in free aid and 700 million yuan ($102.9 million) in interest-free loans.

Which path?

Apart from developing itself and assisting countries in need, China contributes to the realization of the MDGs by taking part in the making of international rules and urging developed countries to honor their commitments, said Pang.

At the high-level UN meeting, Wen called on developed countries to provide assistance to underdeveloped countries, especially the least developed ones. He proposed that donor countries double their donations to the World Food Program in the next five years and that the international community cancel or reduce debts owed by the least developed countries and exempt their exports from tariffs.

Countries should improve the working mechanisms for the MDGs and coordinate the efforts of international organizations to jointly address the pressing problems facing developing countries, including soaring oil and food prices, he added. Wen also called for respect for the right of countries to choose the development path best suited to national conditions.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has promoted its ideology and model of development in the developing world, said Pang. This strategy has backfired, however, resulting in setbacks in many countries, as evidenced by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Argentina's economic crisis from 1999 to 2002 and the persistent political and social chaos in Africa. Many developing countries are discarding the "Washington Consensus" designed to help them revive their economies to embrace the "Beijing Consensus," or the Chinese model of economic and social development, Pang said.