China offered the world a lesson in how to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty on Wednesday at an international conference which underlined its emergence as a powerful alternative to the western model of development.
Putting to one side their concern about human rights, several presidents, a British minister and the heads of numerous international institutions paid homage at the Shanghai conference on poverty reduction to China for its unprecedented successes.
China’s economic expansion has been on a scale and at a speed the world has never seen before. Since opening its economy in 1978, China has accounted for three-quarters of all the people in the world lifted out of abject poverty.
According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese people subsisting on less than $1 a day has fallen from 490-million in 1981 to 88-million. During this period the country’s output has increased more than eightfold and the average income has risen by 7% a year, passing $1 000 for the first time in 2003.
With factories opening and the ports booming, China is now the world’s fourth biggest trading nation and the main draw for foreign investment.
”This will go down as one of the most remarkable feats in human history,” the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, said in his opening address. ”We are here to establish a new economic and political order.”
To underline China’s growing international clout, he announced a $20-million fund to tackle poverty in Asia. While the sum is small, it heralds a new sense of responsibility in a country which has been a significant aid recipient for much of the past 30 years.
But the main aim of the 800 delegates, including the presidents of Brazil, Tanzania and Bangladesh, was to share experiences in poverty alleviation so that small, successful models of development can be adapted and implemented on a bigger scale elsewhere.
It is a long way from the rigid one-formula-fits-all approach of the ”Washington consensus” on open markets, fiscal stringency and privatisation, which was often criticised as an attempt by western policymakers to impose economic dogmas on the developing world.
Such are the shifts taking place in the far east that the World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, found himself in the unusual position of praising the Communist party’s five-year economic plans.
”Shanghai is the obvious place to start in considering ways to reduce poverty. There is something here we need to learn about constancy and good management,” he said. ”This is not a conference for teaching the Washington consensus. The Washington consensus has been dead for years. Today there is no consensus. We are not here to teach doctrines but to exchange ideas.”
China’s model is not easy to emulate. China has opened its door to investment and trade gradually since 1978, privatisation has come in stages, and the government has controlled the financial system to enable companies to borrow huge sums for investment.
These have been the drivers of the rapid growth along the eastern seaboard which has created a huge disparity with the impoverished interior. In the forests of Yunnan, the mountains of Tibet and the deserts of Inner Mongolia millions still lack adequate food and water.
To counter this unbalanced development, which is seen as the main threat to social stability, the government has spent billions of dollars on a ”Go West” policy to build infrastructure in inland regions.
Wealthy cities such as Shanghai have been instructed to form partnerships with poorer areas, which benefit by business links and construction projects: bridges, dams, roads, airports and housing projects are under way everywhere.
Migration regulations have been eased to allow poor peasants to travel to find work in factories and on construction sites. The floating population of labourers is now estimated at more than 100-million. Many more are likely to join them under a government scheme to move 300-million people out of the country and into the cities by 2020.
International donors report a growing willingness by Chinese officials to learn from overseas experiences. Many pilot schemes, such as British-funded HIV-Aids awareness programmes in Yunnan and education projects in Gansu have been adapted and applied by the government at the national level.
Many of the poverty alleviation schemes are made possible only by China’s authoritarian political system. The one-child policy, which has been condemned internationally as an infringement of human rights, has checked population growth and the strain on resources.
Schemes to raise the living standards of minority groups sometimes involve forced resettlement from traditional rural homes to suburban housing estates.
But although the debate on human rights continues, foreign governments are increasingly willing to acknowledge that Beijing, Shanghai and other places have a great deal to teach as well as to learn.
”China is a country in the process of change. It will develop in a way that suits China,” said Hilary Benn, the British secretary of state for international development.
”The growth here is astonishing and so are the benefits. China shows what can be done with the right circumstances and the right policies.”
What the figures amount to
China’s GDP has increased from $362,4-billion to $11,9-trillion since 1979. It is expected to double again in the next 10 years
GDP grew last year at 9,1%
The number of poor in China is estimated to have dropped from 49% of the population in 1981 to 6,9% in 2002
The poverty line is defined in China as an income of 625 yuan a year. The World Bank definition of poverty is $1 a day
More than 62% of China’s 1,3-billion population live in poor rural areas
Average life expectancy has increased from 35 years in 1949 to 71,4 years – Guardian Unlimited Â