China wants to become world’s largest economy by 2020

NANNING, Guangxi – China is eyeing the eradication of poverty by 2020 in an apparent bid to become the world’s largest economy, a local official said here Tuesday.

“We want to fulfill the target by 2020 and to do this, we have established the Office of Poverty Reduction,” Mo Yan-shi told a 15-member Philippine media delegation here invited for the Southwest China cultural and economic familiarization tour.

Mo heads the Poverty Alleviation and Development Office of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

China remains second to the United States in terms of gross domestic product, with $10 trillion in GDP.

The US remains on top of the list of the world’s largest economies with $17.5 trillion in GDP, while Japan ranks third with $4.8 trillion GDP.

On the second leg of the Southwest China tour, local officials showed how the central government and the local councils are working jointly to address poverty in Guangxi.

The province has a total population of 51.52 million, 10 million of whom are considered poor.

All over China, 120 million people out of over a billion population are considered living under the poverty line. The figure has been reduced to 84 million this year.

In Guangxi alone, the poverty population of 10 to 12 million in recent years has been drastically reduced to 6.34 million people this year.

To reduce poverty, Guangxi province gets a total of 600-million RMB a year which is allocated to one local government unit.

The amount includes a special budget coming from the central government in addition to a 300-billion RMB annual support.

The government also provides social support to enable the local units to achieve their targets. There is also a massive job creation program, officials said.

There are 28 state level poverty counties that get special budget; 21 classified as poor at the provincial level, and 8,000 poverty villages.

These comprise 6.34 million of the province’s current total poor population.