“When China Eliminates Poverty in 2020, Beijing Will Have Proved That the Developing World Doesn’t Need US “Aid”

“No country in history has lifted as large a number of people out of poverty as China has done, beginning in the late 20th century. At the turn of the 1980s, over 88% of all Chinese were living in poverty according to the international definition of having an average daily income of $1.90 or less. Today, China’s poverty rate hovers around 2% of the entire population or 30 million people. This poverty is now entirely confined to rural areas. By contrast, in the United States, poverty while mostly in rural areas, is also spread among impoverished inner-cities…

“While some remain skeptical about China’s ability to eliminate poverty by the end of 2020, the record clearly shows that when it comes to tackling issues of extreme poverty in an extremely short period of time, China is not only able to achieve its goals but is able to do so in ways that put other countries to shame. While the poverty rate in the US has stagnated for decades, with the rate being 12.4% at the end of the 1970s with a slight increase to 13.7% at the end of the 1980s, China has dramatically gone from a state of near total poverty to the brink of eliminating all poverty in that same period.

“With China lifting an average of 13 million people out of poverty each year in the last five years, President Xi’s goal of progressively eliminating poverty for 10 million rural poor each year until poverty is fully eliminated at the turn of 2021, is ultimately a realistic goal, albeit one with seismic implications.”

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African Countries Meet On Using Yuan as Reserve Currency

May 30, 2018–A meeting of seventeen central bank and government officials from 14 countries in eastern and southern Africa met in Harare, Zimbabwe on May 29-30 to discuss the possibility of using the yuan as a reserve currency, Xinhua reported on May 29. The meeting was sponsored by the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI). They quote Gladys Siwela-Jadagu, spokesperson for MEFMI, saying that most MEFMI countries have received loans or grants from China and it would “make economic sense” to repay them in yuan. She said that the yuan has become a ‘common currency’ in trade with Africa.    Xinhua notes that China’s trade with South Africa surged by 14.7 percent on a yearly basis in the first four months this year

UN Official Lauds Belt and Road as `Grand Design for the Future’

May 29, 2018 — UN Under-Secretary Shamshad Akhtar, speaking to {China Daily} May 28, praised the Belt and Road Initiative of infrastructure great projects as “an initiative on a more integrated frame, [and] of a scale, that no one has talked about before.” Akhtar is executive secretary of the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

“China leads the regional cooperation and the integration of Asia, with its Belt and Road Initiative strengthening intra-and intercontinental ties,” she told {China Daily}, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Forum at Fudan University. “It’s a grand design. Moving the Belt and Road Initiative forward not only connects Asia internally, but bridges it closer to Europe and Africa.”

She said, “Over the years, China’s shift from quietly forging bilateral relationships, to building multilateral and broad.”-based diplomatic structure has underscored its commitment to deepening its footprint in regional cooperation and integration.