China and the World in the New Era
China promotes common development worldwide. As the world's largest developing country, China has always been an advocate, practitioner and promoter of global poverty reduction and development. In pursuit of these goals, China conducts South-South cooperation, providing to other developing countries assistance with no political conditions attached, and supporting and helping them, particularly the least developed countries (LDCs), in eliminating poverty.
Over the six decades since China began to provide foreign assistance in the early 1950s, it has provided 166 countries and international organizations with nearly RMB400 billion in aid, and dispatched over 600,000 aid workers, of whom more than 700 sacrificed their lives for the development of other countries. On seven occasions, China has canceled debt from interest-free government loans to heavily indebted poor countries and the LDCs. China has provided medical aid to 69 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania, and provided aid to more than 120 developing countries for implementing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
China has been actively engaged in the consultations on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ensuring its full implementation of the agenda. It was the first country to issue a national plan and a progress report on implementation, and has achieved early outcomes in many fields. Within the framework of South-South cooperation, China has provided assistance to other developing countries for their implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Over the three years since the China-UN Peace and Development Fund went into operation in 2016, China has put in place 27 programs under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Sub-Fund, which have benefited 49 Asian, African and Latin American countries and added a powerful engine for the global implementation of the 2030 Agenda. In 2015, China announced that it would set up the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund (SSCAF). By 2018, in more than 30 Asian, African and American countries, China had launched over 200 development cooperation programs under the SSCAF on disaster relief, healthcare, protection of women and children, refugee relief, and environmental protection.
