ECONOMYNEXT – The China Foundation for Rural Development has said it would assist Sri Lanka’s rural development program.
Vice president Liu Wenkui said his foundation had expertise in rural development and it “could assist Sri Lanka in its drive to increase rural productivity for the multiple goals of self-sufficiency, upliftment of rural low income families and increase exports.”
He said this yesterday (25) during a meeting with Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.
Gunawardena said China’s success in eradication of poverty, rural upliftment and ensuring food security has been exemplary.
Wenkui said that the Foundation will distribute dry ration packs for primary school children in rural schools in several districts this week.
In 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China had scored a “complete victory” in its fight against poverty.
The World Bank has said that China has reduced its number of people with incomes below $1.90, by 800 million persons in the last 40 years.
The nation contributed to around 70 percent of global poverty alleviation in the same time span, and was responsible for three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty.
According to a statement released by the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, poverty alleviation has become an important focus of the China-Sri Lanka cooperation.
A World Bank report in collaboration with China’s Ministry of Finance called “Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead” details China’s approach to poverty reduction as being based on two pillars.
One pillar was described as a “broad-based economic transformation to open new economic opportunities and raise average incomes”.
The second was the recognition that targeted support was needed to alleviate persistent poverty; support was initially provided to areas disadvantaged by geography and the lack of opportunities and later to individual households.
The report details a meticulous focus on education, outward orientation, sustained public investments in infrastructure, and structural policies supportive of competition.
During the 1990s, China’s export-oriented coastal industries and Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) integrated, allowing productive supply chains to move further inland, driving investment and modernization into rural areas. Following a wave of privatization, many TVEs and nonessential state-owned enterprises became private.
China’s industrialization strategy moved from being based on cheap labor to benefiting from productive labor, driving in investments in physical and human capital, allowing China to move up the value chain in a growing number of sectors on the global scale.
Vocational training which offered a “learning by doing” approach meant that rural migrants who had received little formal schooling were enabled to engage in the economy and earn incomes.(Colombo/October27/2023)