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"Community-Driven Development and Inclusive Growth"

Keynote Speech By
Zheng Wenkai
Vice-Director of LGOP

At the International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation

18 October 2009
Beijing, People’s Republic of China

Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen:

First of all, I would like to extend my congratulations on the successful convening of the International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation in Beijing, China. This is an important conference for international communication and cooperation in poverty alleviation domain. I’m very glad to attend this meeting and to communicate, discuss and share experiences with you. Next, I will introduce to you CDD and rural poverty development in China from 3 perspectives.

I.  Situations and Tasks of Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development in China

The poverty alleviation career in China has undergone a 60-year extraordinary course. It can be divided into two broad stages: during the first 30 years, from 1949 to 1978, a political system that suites with Chinese particular situation has been established, and people living in poverty has been liberated and become the master of the country. This has made a solid political foundation and important material foundation for anti-poverty career. The next 30 years, since reform and opening up in 1978, we have achieved historical progress in poverty alleviation and development through reform and opening up, specialized poverty alleviation and institutional innovation.

(1)  Basic Living Needs of the Poor in Rural Area have been Essentially Solved. According to China’s official poverty standard, the number of the absolute poor who can not meet the basic food and clothing needs has declined from 250 million in 1978 to 14.79 million in 2007, and its ratio in rural population had dropped from 30.7% to 1.6%; the number of low income poor whose basic living problems have been solved but unstable had dropped from 62.13 million in 2000 to 28.41 million in 2007, and its ratio in rural population had dropped from 6.7% to 3%. The average income of farmers in poor area has also increased significantly.

(2)  Fast Economic Growth in Poor Areas. After many years of support, situations in the nationally designated poor counties have been greatly changed. The growing speed of their domestic GDP and primary industry is above the national average level in China, and labors’ employment structure is also undergoing fast regulation.

(3)  Production and Living Conditions in Poor Area have been Improved Evidently. At the end of 2008, number of natural villages that have access to road, electricity, telephone and TV broadcast in the nationally designated poor counties accounted for 84.4%, 96.8%, 87.5% and 92.9% of total number of villages respectively, and percentage of clinic equipped village has increased to 77.4%, percentage of farmers with access to drinking water and deep well has reached 58.1%.

(4)  Significant Progress of Social Undertakings in Poor Area. The government has implemented 9-year compulsory education in rural area, promoted new mode of rural cooperative healthcare, and established substantial minimum living insurance system. From 2002 to 2008, percentage of villages with kindergarten and pre-school in all surveyed villages has increased from 9.86% to 77.4%; percentage of villages with qualified rural doctor/nurse in all surveyed villages has increased from 10.18% to 77.4%; percentage of villages with qualified midwife in all surveyed villages has increased from 9.58% to 73.7%

Poverty alleviation and development has not only boosted development in poor area, alleviated poverty condition, optimized economical structure, but also has boosted solidarity of ethnic groups, political stability, border consolidation and social harmony.

The success of Chinese poverty alleviation career also speeds up the process of global poverty reduction. According to poverty data provided by Word Bank, and based on the standard of 1USD/day/person, from 1990 to2002, the poor population in China had decreased by195 million, while global poverty depopulated 207 million during the same period, in which China contributed 94.2%; from 1990 to 2007, the number of the poor that have been lifted out of poverty in China accounted for over 70% that of the world. Word Bank and UNDP affirmed this sufficiently.

We also clearly realized that China is still a developing country with low average income and prominent unbalanced development. Especially under the context of ever-increasing industrialization, informtization, urbanization, marketization and internationalization, gaps between farmers - especially poor people – and urban citizens tend to widen. Rural poverty alleviation work is facing severe challenges.

After the government adopted the new poverty standard in 2008, total number of the targeted poor population in rural area was 40.07 million, that is equal to the total population of a medium-sized country in Europe. In Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, north-west dry land, desert zones, karst region, Qin-Ba Mountains and land borders, the living conditions are rigorous - infrastructures are underdeveloped, social development is lagged behind, lack of public services, with severe endemic problems and high percentage of poor population.

Therefore deployment of poverty alleviation is extremely difficult. Tendency of widening gap between urban and rural regions and different social groups has not been controlled effectively yet. Risks related with market variety and food safety factors are endangering feature industries in poor area; social and political poverty-incurring factors are also increasing, project migration, implementation of eco-protection and resource development projects may result in new poverty groups; international financial crisis, slow down of economic growth led to migrant labors returning to their homes, difficult sales of primary products, dropped prices… all these traditional and new poverty-incurring factors are interweaved together, increasing complexity of poverty alleviation work.

International experiences and domestic practices demonstrate that, the more developed the economy and society is, the more necessary it is to take care of poverty; the faster is the developing speed, the more necessary it is to address the imbalance in development. To cope with current international financial crisis, accelerate integration of urban and rural economy, build up a harmonious society and moderately prosperous society, we must give fully support to the weak link – rural poor area, and weak groups – rural poverty population. “Decision on Several Major Issues for Boosting Rural Reformation Development” made at the Third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee emphasizes that: “Good development of new stage poverty alleviation has significant meaning for ensuring entire population share the fruit of reformation and development, and it must be carried out well and in time as a long term historical task. We must improve national poverty alleviation strategy and political system, insist on development-oriented poverty alleviation policy, and realize effective linkage between the minimum living insurance system and development-oriented poverty alleviation polices in rural China. To implement the new poverty standard covering low-income population in rural area, steadily address their basic living needs and get them out of poverty and become better off has become the primary task of new stage poverty alleviation work. Therefore, efforts should be made to focus on improving self-development capacity of the rural poor and providing social assistance to the disabled or those who have lost their labor abilities.

We must strengthen support to the old revolutionary bases, ethnic minorities region, border areas and poor areas. What’s more, we will push forward one-to-one poverty assistance from party and government organizations and east-west poverty alleviation cooperation, give full and active play to the role of enterprises, schools, scientific research institutions, military and other organizations in poverty alleviation and development. At the same time, we will strengthen international communication and cooperation in anti-poverty domain. “Decision” made at the Third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee has set out an overall poverty reduction roadmap in the new era and we would do every efforts to ensure smooth implementation.

II.  Practice of CDD in Poverty Alleviation and Development in China

We have been attaching great importance to seeking truth from facts in our poverty reduction work, insisting on emancipation of the mind and innovation. We have gained abundant experiences while achieving significant accomplishments in poverty alleviation and development, and have blazed a trail for poverty alleviation that accords well with our national conditions At the same time, we also paid much attention to communication and cooperation with the international community, introducing best experiences, practices and theories in poverty reduction. Cooperations with international organizations such as Word Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), have not only promoted poverty reduction and development process but also accumulated abundant experiences in China’s poverty alleviation and development.

In this context, The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP) started CDD pilot project with the Word Bank. The total investments of the project are 6 million USD, covering 60 poor villages in nationally designated poor counties in Guangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. The project includes small infrastructure and public services component, community development fund component and natural resource management and environment improvement component. The main approaches could be summarized as:

(1)  Guaranteed by Law, Promote Democratic Election, Democratic Decision Making, Democratic Management and Democratic Monitoring. In 1998, the Chinese government promulgated Organic Law of The Villagers Committee of the People's Republic of China to guarantee villagers’ self-governance. In 2001,in order to ensure better targeting of the poor population, the Chinese government shifted its policies of county targeting to village targeting and began to implement the Integrated Village Development Programme. The CDD project in China also takes village as the basic unit, effectively links with Organic Law of The Villagers Committee of the People's Republic of China. CDD project implementing groups and monitoring groups are established in natural villages by democratic election, and take charge of project implementation and management; project decision-making committees that led by village committee and attended by representatives from natural villages are established in administrative villages, responsible for project approval and evaluation. At the same time, control power of funds is also handed over to communities and in order to ensure safe operation of funds, strict usage procedures, management methods and supervision system are formulated. What’s more, decision-making rights are also in the hands of the community. “What to do, how to do, and who will do” are all discussed and decided by the community.

(2)  Taking Project as the Carrier, Enhance Self-Development Capacity of the Poor Population. Taking the scientific approach to development as the guiding principle, the project focuses on the improvement of the self-development capacity of the poor. On the one hand, we established a service system to provide external support for the poor to enhance their self-development capacities. We also assigned facilitators, identified the service function of poverty alleviation departments and introduced specialized government agencies such as irrigation and transportation agencies and as well as international NGOs to provide multi-faceted, comprehensive training and guidance for communities; On the other hand, the project gives communities sufficient rooms for self-development and provides opportunities for the poor to enhance their development capacities. Handing over control of funds and decision-making right of projects to communities enhanced self-organization, self-management, self-development and self-supervision capacities of the poor population through fund management and project application, decision-making, implementation, management and supervision, thus fostering their sustainable self-development capacities in the long run.

(3)  Motivated by Innovation, Improve Management Mechanism of Poverty Alleviation. We have been sticking to institutional innovation in poverty reduction work and focusing on integration of self-innovation and introduced innovation. In CDD projects, control power over poverty alleviation funds is handed over to community; decision-making right is handed over to the community so that villagers make decisions and manage the project by themselves; public disclosure system is established in all pilot villages, and project monitoring groups and complaints mechanism are established to ensure publicity and transparency as well as internal and external supervision; we also provide series of training sessions for villagers and let them choose, decide, implement, mange and supervise the project by themselves. By continuous learning, a new mechanism of ‘learning by doing’ has been set up.

(4)  People-Centered, Enhance the Vitality of Poverty Alleviation Work. We stick to the basic working method of “coming from the people and reaching the people, relying on the people, and all for the people”. In the whole process of project implementation, villagers are the owners and their creativity has been given into full play. Through sufficient dissemination and mobilization, villagers are well informed of the project. With the establishment of public disclosure and appealing system and project supervision group, villagers exercised their supervision rights. Through democratic election of project organizations and democratic project selection, villagers exercised their decision-making. The establishment of project screening and approval, implementation, supervision and financial management systems ensured villagers’ participation rights, thus bringing villagers’ enthusiasm and creativity into full play in their engagement of poverty reduction work.

After more than 3 years of piloting, the project was completed in June 2009 successfully. The implementation of the project has improved production and living conditions of the project area directly, increased farmers’ incomes and changed the environment of the project area. The project has achieved expected results:

(1)  Further Formed a Platform for Integrating Poverty Alleviation Resources at the Village Level. In pilot villages, government inputs, services from relevant the technical agency and villagers’ labor contribution are all well integrated into the decision-making and execution mechanism for villagers to discuss, manage and implement the project, and effectively realized the integration of multiple resources.

(2)  Further Formed a Platform for Poverty Alleviation Projects Construction at the Village Level. It effectively addressed problems such as inefficient participation by the villagers and inability of some households for project implementation.

(3)  Further Formed a Training Platform that Combines Project Implementation and Capacity Building. Because democratic decision-making procedures are universally adopted in pilot villages, the participation desire and organization degree of villagers are enhanced evidently. During the project, they have played major roles, and are also well trained to enhance their capacity.

III.  Vision on CDD Scale-up

CDD pilot projects in China have significant implications for us to promote poverty alleviation work in the new stage. I will present few opinions about the development of CDD in China:

(1)  Strengthen Research on CDD and Summing Up Experiences. Combining international practice with domestic practice is an important experience we have gained from reform and opening up. In light of practice in the pilot projects, we need to abstract some concrete operation contents and methods scientifically, such as mechanism of funds directly managed by the village, project selection and decision-making mechanism, public disclosure and complaints mechanism, government support mechanism, etc. Villagers from the project area reflect that project procedures are too complex, and the cost of project management is too high. Therefore, efforts should be made in the future to make an operational manual that is standard and simple, economical and practical. To undertake poverty reduction work in the rural area and in the poor area in particular, we should seek to be simple and easy.

(2)  Further Explore how to Learn from Current CDD Project. In projects such as using Central Welfare Lottery to support the Integrated Village Development Programme in the old revolutionary bases, post-disaster retaliation and reconstruction in Wenchuan Quake-affected poor villages, we have leveraged experiences and methods in CDD; and our fifth poverty alleviation loan project with World Bank will also adopt CDD approach. In the Poor Village Cooperative Fund pilot project began in 2006, certain features of CDD were also introduced. In the future, we will try to adopt CDD approach to promote agri-business development, eco-construction and community environment improvement in poor areas.

(3)  Strengthen Communication and Cooperation with the International Community. We hope that the Work Bank, ADB could continue to exert their influences as multilateral donors by establishing effective platform for international communication and cooperation on CDD and organizing field visits, workshops and training activities, thus promoting internationalization of domestic CDD experiences and localization of international CDD experiences.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Poverty alleviation in China is the responsibility of the central government and poverty alleviation departments at all level, the expectation of officials and the public in the poor area, and also an important part of anti-poverty career of human beings. We welcome all international multilateral and bilateral organizations and NGOs that are committed to poverty-reduction career and interested in China’s poverty reduction to participate in making theories and practical innovations for Chinese poverty alleviation and development actively. Let us strengthen communication and cooperation between all countries in poverty alleviation domain, and contribute to global poverty-reduction career.

Thank you!