A top United Nations official Monday listed HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, environmental pollution, and gender equality as major challenges China faces despite remarkable economic and social progress China has made since 1978.

Addressing China Development Forum held in Beijing, Zephirin Diabre, under-secretary-general of the United Nations, said the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in China is estimated to be 1 million, but could reach 10 million by 2010.

Citing a report on China's progress on Millennium Development Goals, the UN official, who is also associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said China's sustainability is threatened with over 90 percent of China's grasslands degraded and over 75 percent of the water in rivers in urban areas unfit for human contact.

"In terms of gender inequality, primary education girl/boy ratio is now 90 percent on a national basis while girl/boy ratio in secondary education is 85 percent. Women also lag significantly lag behind men in representation in business and government".

He said China's progress since 1978 marking the beginning of important reforms and opening up has been "truly remarkable".

China registered an average annual economic growth rate of 9.4 percent during the past decades since 1978.

"It has been remarkable both in terms of economic growth, rapidly increasing levels of productivity and industrialization, trade influence and ability to attract foreign direct investment."

The official said the progress of China has translated into unprecedented scales of poverty reduction and social advancement.

By Chinese standards, the number of people living below the poverty line has been reduced from 250 million in 1978 to less than 30 million in 2003.

But by the United Nations standards, China is still home to 102 million people that live below the poverty line with sharp disparities between urban and rural areas, and the coastal areas and the interior provincial areas, said the UN official.

"As history has told us many times in the past, inequality while acceptable at the early stage of economic transformation, can in the long run weaken the social consensus without which no progress is possible".

He said China will shoulder greater global and regional responsibilities as it further strengthen its position in the world economy.

"This is already evidenced by China's consistent efforts in making positive contribution to UN peace-keeping efforts, to the mitigation of global conflicts and crisis. The constructive role China played in overcoming the Asian Economic Crisis and in contributing to the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief efforts are also important signals."

He said that is evident in China's major role in advancing South-South cooperation, and many countries in Africa and around the world look at the China model, as the most impressive example of success in the fight against poverty and underdevelopment.

"There is no denying that the future of China's development will not only be important for its 1.3 billion people alone. The experience and challenges of China are both unprecedented."

He said China's success will be of great reference to the rest of the world, especially developing countries, in dealing with their own challenges. "The whole world has a stake in China's success."