Honorable Director Jiang Jianguo, Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen,Good morning!It is a great pleasure to meet with representatives from around the world in Beijing today to discuss new developments in global poverty reduction and new paths for cooperation. On behalf of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, I would like to extend warm congratulations on the opening of the International Forum on Reform and Opening Up and Poverty Reduction in China.The magnificent history of mankind is not only a history of moving from ignorance to civilization but also a history of constantly fighting against poverty and moving from backwardness to prosperity. Anti-poverty is a great event and an eternal theme of governance in China and abroad. It is an essential requirement of socialism as well as a key mission of the CPC and our country to eradicate poverty, improve people’s living standards, and achieve common prosperity among the people.Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, especially since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, has moved forward with the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy, unswervingly advanced reform and opening up, and pursued development. While comprehensively improving people’s living standards and wellbeing, we will adhere to the basic strategy of targeted poverty reduction and alleviation, and mobilize all social forces to successfully blaze a new model of development-oriented poverty alleviation with Chinese characteristics. According to the current poverty threshold, China’s rural population living in poverty dropped from 770 million in 1978 to 30.46 million in 2017 with more than 700 million rural poor people lifted out of poverty which lays a solid foundation for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. With the highest number of people moving out of poverty, China was the first developing country to realize the UN Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction. It has made important contributions to global poverty reduction.China’s great achievements in poverty reduction and alleviation stem from the unswerving efforts of the CPC Central Committee to advance reform and opening up and vigorously develop the economy. Reform and opening up is a game-changing move in making China what it is today, and a game-changing move for us to achieve China’s two centenary goals and its great national rejuvenation. Over the past 40 years, our party has always focused on economic development and pursued reform and opening up, so the Chinese economy has maintained rapid growth. From 1978 to 2017, China’s GDP grew by 33.5 times in real terms, an average annual growth rate of 9.5 percent and an average annual growth rate of twice that of the world economy every eight years. It was far higher than the average annual growth rate of around 2.9% in the same period and one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, laying an important foundation for large-scale poverty reduction. China’s reform and opening up has greatly liberated and developed the productive forces and stimulated the economic vitality of the whole society. Over the past 40 years, a large amount of surplus rural labor force has moved from rural areas to cities and from less developed to developed areas, and more than 280 million people have migrated to cities to work. This has optimized the allocation of human resources and provided necessary conditions for poverty alleviation and reduction. It is fair to say that without reform and opening up, China’s economy would not have developed rapidly and poverty reduction would not have been possible.Second, the CPC Central Committee adopted targeted poverty alleviation strategies. As poverty takes on various forms, we must adopt more targeted measures. After the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping went deep into poverty-stricken areas to help the poor and alleviate poverty. On the basis of the full investigation, the CPC Central Committee issued and implemented a series of important documents to achieve victory in the fight against poverty. It also adhered to the targeted poverty reduction strategy. Targeted measures are implemented in terms of funding, projects, and recipients. Every impoverished household is guaranteed help, every village has designated officials to carry out poverty eradication measures, and goals are met within the defined standards so as to ensure that all policies are applied to poverty alleviation targets. Under the principle of One Major Task and Three Processes （Developing the private economy as the major task, and promoting industrialization, urbanization, and modernization）, governments at all levels, society, and enterprises have worked together with the poor to adopt site-specific and targeted measures so as to reduce poverty in a real sense on the basis of different causes and types of poverty. This has led to higher effectiveness of poverty alleviation policies.As the Chinese saying goes, half of the people who have embarked on a one-hundred-mile journey may fall by the wayside. Despite tremendous achievements in poverty alleviation, many difficulties and challenges still exist. And we are faced with prominent problems and tough tasks. First, some areas, especially ethnic minority areas, border areas, former revolution base areas, and contiguous poverty-stricken areas, suffer from deep poverty, and high cost and difficulty in poverty alleviation. Second, some people, especially those families who are poor due to illness or disability lack the labor capacity. General poverty alleviation measures are difficult to support these people to get rid of poverty. These are shortcomings in poverty alleviation. We need to take more targeted measures and provide stronger policy support to address these problems and consolidate our achievements over a longer period of time.By 2020, all the rural population living in poverty below China’s current poverty threshold will have been lifted out of poverty. The attainment of this goal means that China will eliminate absolute poverty in a historic way and achieve the poverty reduction target set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations 10 years ahead of schedule. This is not only a historic event amid the great renewal of the Chinese nation, but also a major contribution to the cause of human progress. We should also be clearly aware that eliminating absolute poverty below the current poverty threshold is only half of the task. Relative poverty is a long-term issue. In a developing country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, poverty reduction has always been a major issue.The 19th CPC National Congress made it clear that as socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved. What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. At present, China’s basic national condition remains unchanged: the country is still in the primary stage of socialism, and will continue to be so for a considerable period of time to come. And China’s international status as the largest developing country in the world has yet to change. This is contemporary China’s basic national realities on the basis of which the poverty in China must be addressed. We must try our utmost to take development as the party’s top priority in governing and rejuvenating the country and adhere to the new concept of development. Besides, we will encourage more balanced, adequate and sustainable high-quality economic development and lay a stronger material foundation for poverty alleviation as we seek to eliminate absolute poverty and reduce relative poverty and move toward common prosperity.Ladies and gentlemen, getting rid of poverty is the fundamental right and common ideal of people in all countries to pursue a happy life. It is the common mission of governments and international organizations and an important task facing developing countries. Today, the world has a highly developed material base but uneven and inadequate development still prevails. At the same time, the North-South Divide is still huge, and people in many countries still live in hardship, poverty, and hunger. Poverty eradication faces many global challenges, especially the current rise of anti-globalization and trade protectionism, which pose a major threat to world economic growth. The fundamental solution lies in economic development. Only long-term, stable and balanced development can create conditions for narrowing the North-South Divide and the gap between the rich and the poor. Unilateralism and protectionism run counter to the goal of poverty reduction.The world today is undergoing major development, transformation, and adjustment. The interests of all countries are deeply intertwined, and win-win cooperation has become the trend of the times. No country can cope with the adjustments facing humanity alone, nor can it retreat into self-isolation. China will continue to be a positive contributor to global development. We will unswervingly pursue a win-win strategy of opening up and work for a fair, just, inclusive and orderly international economic system. Only by building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind can we make our due contribution to poverty reduction worldwide. Different national conditions, levels, stages, and models of development allow us to have accumulated a lot of experience in poverty reduction. Countries should learn from each other, strengthen exchanges and cooperation and draw on useful social experience.The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is the national high-end think-tank. We will give full play to the role of the Party and national think tanks. Centering on the theory and practice of poverty alleviation and development in China, we will carry out strategic, holistic, forward-looking and comprehensive research, and present valuable research results to make suggestions for winning the fight against poverty and provide important theoretical support for the development of poverty alleviation.We are ready to work closely with research institutions and think tanks at home and abroad. That means we will strengthen joint research on poverty reduction and exchange of visits between researchers from think tanks, deepen the exchanges and mutual learning of international poverty reduction experience, and contribute wisdom and strength to building a better world of common prosperity away from poverty.I wish this forum a full success. Thank you very much.Translated by Li Guoliang