The final delivery of food aid from the United Nations World Food Program, worth 7.2 million US dollars, arrived at Chiwan Port in Shenzhen, a city in south China's Guangdong Province, Thursday morning.

After more than 25 years of providing aid, the world's largest humanitarian agency will phase out food aid to China beginning next year, amid the country's growing economic vitality.

The batch of 43,450 tons of wheat will be sent to four poor inland provinces, including Gansu and Shangxi provinces, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, for poverty alleviation projects.

"We will phase out the food aid because China now can afford to eliminate extreme poverty itself," said Douglas Broderick, WFP China Representative. "We and the Chinese government have agreed upon the issue in February 2001."

According to statistics from the National Statistics Bureau, in the past 20 years, China has cut the population living under extreme poverty by more than 200 million.

With rapid economic development, China has become an active donor in world affairs. Statistics show that in the past four years, China committed 5 million US dollars for WFP's projects in other countries. China's non-governmental organizations donated 500 million yuan worth of aid to the Asia tsunami victims.

The WFP began providing food aid to China in 1979. The organization provided 1 billion US dollars worth of aid, supporting more than 30 million Chinese to meet their immediate food needs and helping to build an infrastructure through programs exchanging food for work and training.

"The WFP has contributed greatly to the poverty alleviation in some areas of poor countries in China," said Liu Fuhe, spokesman for the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development. "These programs have been proved successful and efficient."

The aid is of a small scale compared with the huge population of poor in China and phasing out of food aid will not affect China's overall poverty-alleviation process.

China still has 26 million people living under poverty line and the central government has vowed to eliminate poverty in 2010.

Facing post-food-aid era, The WFP and China are to explore ways of strengthening their decades-old partnership to address the growing problems of chronic malnutrition.

"China will continue to actively take part in the poverty-relief and emergency aid projects launched by the WFP in the future and share with the whole world our expertise in poverty-relief and natural disaster aid," said an official with the International Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. Currently, there are Chinese experts joining WFP's aid projects in other countries.

In addition to cooperation on aid projects, the WFP also plans to increase purchases in China of food and non-food aid materials, said Broderick. In 2004, the organization purchased 30 million US dollars worth of aid materials from China.

Source: Xinhua