China News Service, Beijing, March 24 (Reporter Liu Wenwen) "The road to development is not smooth sailing and is full of setbacks and mistakes. This is true for all economies. But looking at China today, we know that everything is possible." World Bank Bank President AJay Banga said in Beijing on the 24th.
When attending the 2024 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum on the same day, Peng Anjie said that the world is currently facing persistent poverty, protracted conflicts and an intractable climate crisis. These intertwined challenges have jointly exacerbated inequality. Over the next decade, 1.1 billion young people in the Global South will reach working age, yet these countries are expected to create only 325 million jobs over the same period.
On March 24, World Bank President Peng Anjie delivered a speech at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum. Photo by China News Service reporter Tomita
However, he also reminded that this is just a prediction and does not represent the actual destiny. "We have encountered challenges before and have overcome these challenges together. China's extraordinary journey proves that anything is possible."
He gave an example: In 1978, 770 million people in China were in extreme poverty. But in this year, China embarked on a difficult reform process that fundamentally changed its development trajectory. In the following decades, China's labor force grew by two-thirds, creating more than 8 million jobs every year for more than 30 consecutive years.
"This explosive employment growth is also the period during which China has achieved the fastest pace of poverty reduction. China's success has been so great that the global poverty rate has dropped from 44% to 9%." He said that this once again proves that creating job opportunities is the key to eradicating poverty and reducing poverty. The surest path to prosperity.
Today, China has transformed from a World Bank recipient to one of the largest donors, and China's experience has also been applied to many countries such as Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Vietnam. Peng Anjie said that the road to development is long, and each country is lighting the way forward for the next country, and China is the forerunner on this road. (over)