DAVOS: China’s progress toward eradicating poverty is unprecedented and its effort to promote multilateralism should be embraced by all members of the global community for the sake of common development, the president of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has said. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the WEF, also known as the Davos Forum, which has brought together politicians, business people and representatives from social and cultural circles to find solutions to the world’s problems. At the heart of the ongoing WEF gathering are Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. “The goals are very ambitious. The overall aim then is to eradicate all extreme poverty by 2030,” on which China has an impressive record, Borge Brende, an experienced Norwegian politician and diplomat, told media in an interview. In decades, “we have seen more people lifted out of extreme poverty in China, maybe 800 million people. We have never seen that number of people lifted out of extreme poverty ever before in the history of mankind,” so this is “a great achievement of China,” Brende said. Brende said although China has been developing very fast, there are still some poor regions in the country, which makes the country’s economic growth more complex. “So China has to continue to grow … the growth now needs to take more care of clean water, clean air. It also has to create jobs further up in the value chain,” Brende said. “It will be very interesting to follow China moving forward, how it will continue to prosper its population but balancing it with nature and inclusiveness,” he added. To ensure the world meets the Sustainable Development Goals, Brende said he agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remarks in Davos three years ago that in face of common challenges, multilateralism and collaboration are the way to go. – The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
