China Ranks 81st in 2006 Human Development Report – People’s Daily
From People’s Daily, via Chinaelections.org:
China was ranked 81st on a list of countries published in the 2006 Human Development Report (HDR). What does this mean for China? Our Stockholm Correspondent, Xuefei Chen, interviewed Kevin Watkins, director of the UN Human Development Report Office, during a seminar held on Friday in Stockholm about how clean water and sanitation will reduce poverty by half before 2015. The seminar was organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute and more than 200 people from the UNDP, business, NGOs, the water industry, and people involved in climate change and human rights participated.
China faces challenge in social equity
Mr. Watkins was the main author of the 2006 HDR. He said that China performed better than expected in terms of average income. Although the Chinese economy is huge, the enormous size of the population means that China’s GDP per capita is still very low. Mr. Watkins thinks the real challenge for China is turning its huge economic power into human development in terms of health, education, the environment and so on.
“People in China are very aware of the big issues such as equality and health. I think the big challenge is how to prevent the inequality between different areas and high and low income groups from growing bigger.” [Full Text]