8 Chinese development cases included in WB book on global poverty reduction

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz praises China's poverty reduction efforts in a new publication that details worldwide efforts to reduce the scourge of poverty.

Entitled Reducing Poverty on a Global Scale: Learning and Innovating for Development, the book identifies the main factors that cause an increase or reduction in poverty and what this means for the World Bank and donor countries.

An entire chapter is devoted to China which has worked closely with the World Bank to pilot innovative poverty reduction efforts in Southwest China, Qinba Mountain Area and northwest China's Gansu Province, and China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The book outlines how the World Bank-sponsored programs helped raise incomes, improve food security, and expand access to basic services in 61 of China's poorest counties. These projects have played an important role in poverty reduction and rural development, it said.

In his preface to the book, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said "In my first trip to East Asia as World Bank president (last year), I was impressed by China's experience in achieving the most rapid large-scale poverty reduction in human history.

The Loess Plateau Project alone has helped break the cycle of environmental deterioration and poverty for 1.2 million farmers.

"But the most important thing we can gain from China is not a formula for any one project, but an emphasis on supporting change and capacity improvements through knowledge-sharing and learning.

This book is an important contribution to sharing knowledge between developing countries that have started to achieve concrete results in the fight against poverty and other developing countries that can benefit from the lessons learned."

The chapter on China highlights lessons from the National Poverty Reduction Program, which was designed to lift 70 million people out of poverty between 1994 to 2000. Local projects included the Southwest Poverty Reduction Project and the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project.

The book also includes three case studies on education, rural roads, and water supply and sanitation. These include one on China's institutional innovation and private sector development and a unique model of regional cooperation involving Shanghai helping out Yunnan

The book concludes that although progress appears to be the result of multidimensional interventions, leadership commitment, sustained and shared growth at the macroeconomic level, seem to be the necessary foundation for poverty reduction.

Adaptation to local conditions and an ability to innovate and share knowledge are also important aspects for poverty reduction, according to the book.

Source: Xinhua