UK scholar: China's poverty alleviation helps world achieve goal five years in advance

It is China that has helped the United Nations attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of extreme poverty and halving poverty in all its forms, said Robert Walker, Professor at the School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University, during an interview with China News Network.

"In 2021, China eradicated poverty from all its rural areas. Even before that, when the world was seeking to halve extreme poverty under the millennium development goals, it was China that helped the world do that five years ahead of schedule," said Walker, who is also Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

The professor noted that China achieved this by adopting a strategy which involved all levels of government: at national level, a commitment to sustained economic growth; at provincial level, the provision of infrastructure of the highest standard, with high-speed trains and motorways reaching into the foothills of the mountains and beyond; at township, county and village level, providing individual financial support through social security and social assistance.