I am honored to participate in this forum focusing on China’s reform and opening up, and international cooperation on poverty reduction. I thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak at this important event.2018 marks the 40th Anniversary of China’s reform and opening up, as well as the third year since the adoption of the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is, therefore, an excellent moment to reflect on the achievements that have been realized in the global efforts to eliminate extreme poverty – and, to note the ways in which we have fallen short in that effort, and to plot our next steps as we work together to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals.China, as we all know, began this journey in 1978. The journey is extraordinary – from a highly impoverished low-income country to a higher middle-income country with a very low rate of extreme poverty. A journey that is not only felt at home, but globally as well – an enormous contribution to global poverty reduction and development. Consequently, the world is looking at China to learn from her experience and increasingly play a role in the ongoing global efforts toward sustainable development.Allow me to take stock of some of the achievements. China’s contribution to the world’s progress in poverty reduction over the past few decades is impressive. Since 1990, the base year for measuring achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, which preceded the SDGs, nearly 1.1 billion people moved out of extreme poverty around the globe[1]. MDG 1, the reduction of global extreme poverty rates by 50%, was attained, a historic achievement. During that period more than 800 million Chinese people rose out of poverty, giving great impetus to the world effort towards poverty reduction.[2]How did China do this? Sustained rapid economic growth played a central role in this process, as China’s GDP increased by more than 85 times in US dollar terms, growing from 1.75% of the global economy to over 15% today. But growth is only part of the story; the inclusiveness of China’s growth, the way in which the entire population benefited from it, is more impressive. Growth was not concentrated in big cities, as in some developing countries, nor was it all generated by industry and trade. China consistently paid great attention to improving the lives of the rural population, where poverty rates are highest.The reform era started with agricultural reforms, and in the first seven years from 1978-1985 rural incomes in China rose by 15.8% per year in constant prices. China then launched a series of new polices to continue improving the lives of the rural population, building infrastructure, improving public services, and then allowing and facilitating internal migration of rural labor to urban areas where livelihood opportunities were better.A key point that I want to emphasize, is that even as China pursued rapid growth, China had a strong focus on and took actions to ensure that the whole population shared in the benefits of growth. This is key as we are witnessing an increase in inequalities around the world, between and within countries.But the challenge is far from over, in China and across the globe.Globally, extreme income poverty still stands at 783 million, much of it in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia.[3]China has its own ambitious goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2020, using its own national poverty line which is a bit higher than the World Bank $1.90/day line. In the last four years the poverty headcount in China has fallen by 57 million people to approximately 30 million, a little over 2% of the total population. As elsewhere in the world, the last remaining so-called “pockets” are the most difficult to address because of geographic obstacles, discrimination and exclusion. This is the “last mile” and the pledge that countries made in the 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind.If we use a multidimensional definition of poverty the number is higher. According to the 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index （MPI） released by UNDP and Oxford University, some 1.3 billion people live in multidimensional poverty, which is almost a quarter of the population of the 104 countries for which the 2018 MPI is calculated. An additional 879 million are at risk of falling into poverty, which could happen quickly if they suffer setbacks from conflict, sickness, drought, unemployment and more.The same report for China estimates that 4% of the population, 56 million people, live in multidimensional poverty. By global standards for developing countries these percentages are not high, but the absolute number of poor people is still daunting. Urban areas are particularly challenging, where cash incomes tend to be higher, but where living conditions, including housing, safety and environment, and access to public services, are often more challenging than in rural settings. Awareness has been growing in China of the new problems of urban poverty, which are likely to be part of the next wave of post-2020 poverty concerns here, as around the world.Inequality has been highlighted as a challenge by countries at all levels of development. The gap between the world’s richest and poorest people has been widening such that between 1980 and 2016, the top 1% richest individuals captured twice as much growth in their incomes as the 50% poorest individuals.[4] Poverty affects women disproportionately, and children to an even greater extent. In emerging and developing countries, more than half of all children under the age of 18 live in extreme or moderate poverty[5]. In developed countries, 20% of the children live below the relative poverty line[6]. Members of ethnic minority groups, on average, are much more likely to live in poverty than the ethnic majority in any given country. These kinds of social barriers make poverty eradication a complex and difficult job.China’s income inequality is also high by international standards, although deliberate interventions have led to some improvement in recent years. Inequality grew rapidly in the first decades of reform and opening up. After peaking at 0.5 in 2009, China’s Gini coefficient has fallen to 0.468.China has emphasized that in this new era, equitable distribution must be a high priority. Specific steps toward that goal have been taken; particularly fiscal reform including more progressive taxes and the new policy by which the central government will fund a larger share of social service costs in poorer provinces.Natural resources management and climate change have been major obstacles to addressing poverty. With rapid economic growth and increasing pressure on land and water resources, the environment is being degraded at an unprecedented rate. Coupled with the impacts of climate change, environment degradation continues to have deleterious economic and social repercussions for the poor. It is clear that human development will need to be accompanied by reduced resource use and environment restoration if successes in poverty reduction are not to be undermined by environmental change.In China, where growth has been so rapid and where a large population is concentrated in a relatively small area, these environmental stresses are severe. Air, water and land resources are all exposed to pollution. China’s goal of achieving an “ecological civilization,” now embodied in the country’s Constitution, is a remarkable commitment to overcome these problems. The traditional approach, that saw environmental concerns as an obstacle to growth and progress, is replaced here and elsewhere with the awareness that only sustainable growth rooted in sound management of our scarce natural resources can meet the long-term needs of China’s people.