A boy sits on rail tracks in Kibera, one of the largest slums in east Africa, in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, July 12, 2013. (Xinhua/Meng Chengguang)
NAIROBI, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's efforts to cut poverty levels at home translated into major industrialization initiatives in which industries produced massively to meet the needs of the population, leading to rapid growth which has pushed China to become the world's second largest economy, say Kenyan experts.
The results achieved by Beijing in cutting poverty at home within a span of less than 30 years, by developing local industries to meet the demands of the local population, now "confers credibility in China's leadership" in the global anti-poverty efforts, they say.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in September at the UN Summit in New York the Chinese pledge of 2 billion U.S. dollars to help finance broad global efforts to fight poverty in developing countries under the UN's new set of anti-poverty goals known as the Sustainable Development Goals.
Gerishon Ikiara, Senior Lecturer of International Economics at the University of Nairobi, told Xinhua that the announcement in New York, signified not only China's growing stature as the world's second largest economy, but also its rising political and social influence internationally.
"This offer by China is one of the largest amounts pledged in recent years for poverty efforts," Ikiara told Xinhua.
"It is expected to encourage other developed countries to make similar efforts heralding a new impetus in the struggle for poverty reduction globally," he noted.
Ikiara who is the former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport said China has been pursuing a clearly stated policy of eliminating abject poverty by the year 2020, just five years away.
"This policy which was adopted in 1978 has achieved fairly dramatic results so far with more than 700 million people in China moving out of the poverty levels in barely 37 years," he said.
The lecturer in international economics said the seriousness and commitment to poverty eradication is demonstrated by the rapidly increasing budgetary resources to the implementation of this policy.
"In 2014, the budgetary allocation for poverty reduction was increased further by 10 percent to reach 43.3 billion yuan. An important meeting is already planned later in October 2015 to review and set new targets for China's poverty reduction program for the period 2016-2020," Ikiara said.
Efforts to cut poverty at home saw China emerge as the first developing country to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the set of goals set by the world body in 2000, to halve global poverty by 2015. A combination of policies enabled the Chinese to lift over 700 million out of poverty.
In New York, President Xi said China will continue to increase investment in the least developed countries, aiming to increase its total to 12 billion dollars by 2030.
President Xi told a sustainable development summit of world leaders at the UN that Beijing will exempt the debt of outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the relevant least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries.
"The measure of achievement in poverty reduction in China is to compare what the situation was before 1980 and what it is more than three decades later," said Munene Macharia, International Relations Lecturer at the United States International University (USIU) in Nairobi.
Munene said China has succeeded in reducing the level of general poverty and lifting its economy to become the second largest in the world.
"This is did by concentrating on producing and supplying at the domestic level whatever it was the people needed, but not importing, that had the effect of stimulating the economy," he added.
"It is clear that China is emerging as a global leader in poverty eradication efforts and that this leadership follows closely from the country's highly impressive achievements at home on the same issue," Ikiara said.
