Mr Chairman,
Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure today to participate in the 24^th IFAD Governing Council. On behalf of the Chinese Government and Chinese Delegation, I would like to express my best wishes and greetings to fellow delegates and friends from IFAD and other related UN agencies.

Mr Chairman,

Last year, China’s agriculture and rural economy maintained a smooth growth and our pre-set goals have been met. Thanks to adequate grain reserve, agricultural product supply was able to satisfy the market demand regardless of the severe natural disasters and the drop of grain production. Over the past many years, the sustainable and steady development of agriculture and rural economy has laid a solid material foundation for China’s food security and poverty-alleviation endeavour.

The Chinese Government has attached great importance to poverty alleviation and has always put hunger and poverty eradication and support of poor areas in developing their economy on the top priority. Meanwhile, we actively encourage the whole society to go all out in support of the economic development in the poverty-stricken regions. Since China started its reforms, and particularly since China launched its large-scale, organized and planned poverty-alleviation drive in mid-80s, the poverty problem in the whole country has been remarkably eased owing to the support of the government and people from all circles and the unswerving efforts of people in the poor regions.

At present, we have basically solved the subsistence problem among the rural poor and fulfilled the country’s "8-7 Plan of Attacking the Stronghold of Poverty". However, we are still clearly minded that part of the population are still living under poverty line without enough to eat and wear, and the country’s poverty alleviation standard is quite low. Therefore, poverty eradication remains to be a heavy task for us. For this, the Chinese Government is now intensifying its efforts, increasing investments and improving the management of poverty-alleviation work. We are also actively summarizing the experience of and popularizing the approaches advocated by IFAD of offering micro-credit and making our poverty-alleviation impact to reach the poor farm households. Moreover, efforts are underway to greatly extend science and technology, constantly enhance the quality of the labourers and managers in the poor regions, strengthen our work of helping the targeted areas, coordinate the work of eastern regions in their assistance to western regions, expand the coverage of our support and help for the poor areas and improve the result of all these efforts. Apart from that, the Chinese Government is losing no time to analyze, formulate and improve policy measures aimed at consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation efforts in order to fundamentally change the situation of the poor regions.

Mr Chairman,
Mr President,

To eradicate hunger and poverty is a global issue and challenge facing us all. To realize this objective, all governments, international agencies and the international society as a whole should make hard efforts in this new century. We believe, as an international financial agency aimed at helping the poor, IFAD should continue to play its unique role in the international poverty alleviation field. To this end, we need to strive to mobilize adequate resources so as to further support and strengthen the work of IFAD. The Chinese Delegation is pleased to note that positive progress has been made in the 5^th Replenishment of IFAD resources and we appreciate the positive efforts made by all parties. In the meantime, we also hope all member states to make more flexible and positive response to the 5^th Replenishment process in order to complete this work on time. The Chinese Government has always showed great concern and support for the work of IFAD and made positive contribution to all previous IFAD replenishments. In order to continue this support, our government has tried hard, within the reach of our budgetary capacity, to increase our contribution to the 5^th Replenishment. For the 4^th Replenishment, China contributed USD 8.5 million, and for the 5^th Replenishment, China will increase its contribution to USD 10 million.

Mr Chairman,

The Chinese Government supports IFAD Plan of Work and budgetary level for 2001 and we appreciate IFAD’s efforts to cut down administrative costs and enhance work efficiency; we also give high appreciation to President Al-Sultan for his contribution and excellent leadership. The Chinese Government hopes that IFAD continues to maintain and enhance the quality of its financial projects and make even greater contribution to the cause of poverty eradication and agricultural development of the developing countries.

Mr Chairman,
Mr President,

As China always supports IFAD’s work, IFAD has also provided positive and valuable assistance to China’s poverty alleviation. The Chinese Government and the Chinese people treasure this good cooperative relationship with IFAD and its member countries, and sincerely wish to further strengthen our cooperation with IFAD, its members and other international agencies in order to join hands with all and make our due contribution to eradicating global hunger and poverty and speeding up world agriculture development.

Thank you!