China is one of the biggest countries in the world with a population of 1.3 billion. They developed their own set of development goals (called Xiaokang) in 1980 and have stuck to them ever since. At the moment, China is on track to achieving the MDGs but they still have work to do in regional areas ensure equality as the central regions of China are significantly poorer than the coastal areas.

Target 1: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day. China has achieved this first target (using 1990 figures) going from 250 million living below the poverty line, to 30 million. Still there is room for improvement as it is estimated that the occupants of the cities are nearly three times richer than people in the country areas.

Target 2: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. China has already lowered the amount of their population living without enough food from 17% of the population to 11%. The percentage of underweight children has also dropped dramatically from 21 % to 10%. The Chinese people have worked very hard to achieve this level by increasing their grain output and work-for-food programs.

Target 3: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling. China is ahead of this target as well, having raised the percentage of children enrolled in primary school from 96.3% to 98.6%. Enrollments for secondary school have been raised to 90% from a previous 66.7%. There are still problems, especially in rural communities where the population is poorer and cannot afford to send their children to school.

Target 4:Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015. Although there has been excellent progress in this area, China still needs to improve. The current ratio of girls to boys is 90% in primary schooling, in secondary education it is 85%. Already 16 Chinese provinces have achieved the 100% ratio this goal aims for, but some western provinces have fallen far behind the rest of China, for example in one province 6.42 million girls had never attended school.

Target 5: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five. Over the course of the 1990's infant mortality in China dropped from 50 (in every thousand births) to 30 and under-fives mortality dropped to 36 (out of a thousand births) to 61. If China could lower the rate further to the 20 out of a thousand births it needs to achieve the goal, it would match the under-five mortality rate of middle-income countries.

Target 6: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio. Maternal mortality has lowered from 89 deaths for every 100,000 births to 50 in every 100,000. This is probably partially due to the fact that 76% of births were attended by health workers. Unfortunately there is again a difference between the provinces. In eastern provinces, there has been much improvement in medical facilities, especially for women. Women in western provinces have comparatively limited access to health care.

Target 7: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is widespread through China, with the infection passed through sharing needles, blood products and unprotected sex. 51% of the people infected are between 20 and 29 and an education program has been targeted at this group. There has been a severe jump in the amount of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS with 76,000 children loosing their parents to HIV/AIDS in 2001 compared to only 1,000 in 1995. HIV/AIDS awareness has greatly increased and now governments are working towards containing the spread of the disease and reducing the fear associated with HIV/AIDS.

Target 8: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.In 2000, China had 4.5 million cases of Tuberculosis, which was only a 9% drop from 1990. Unfortunately, tuberculosis is 50% higher in western china than in the east, making progress difficult to see and the disease very hard to combat. China still aims to reduce tuberculosis by half by 2015.

Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources. China has a vast population which continues to grow, making this a difficult target to achieve. Unsafe practises have made some areas of land unsuitable for farming because of soil erosion and water pollution. Rivers, lakes and ground water have been affected through competition between the city and country. Also much waste produced by industry and agriculture is flushed into the waterways without being filtered. The Chinese government is developing and as such more attention is being paid to the environment.

Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. The UN defined access to safe drinking water as "at least 20 liters per person per day from a source within one kilometer of one's dwelling". Although water to rural regions still needs attention, China is almost on track for this target. 94% of city inhabitants have access to safe drinking water and 66% of the rural population.

Target 11: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.China has improved their sanitization from 8% in 1993 to 40% in 1999 but much of the population still suffers from diseases such as diarrhea and hepatitis which are caused by unsafe drinking water and poor living conditions. A major problem fro the government of China is that the percentage of people with access to proper sanitization is less than half the amount of people with access to safe drinking water which has severely slowed their progress.

Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. China has joined the World Trade Organization and has managed to continue its growth at a steady rate. China is now the fastest growing developing country in the world with an increase of 22% in their exports and imports. China mainly trades with America, Japan and Europe but is now beginning to pay attention to its Central Asian neighbours.

Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies-especially information and communications technologies. The information technology boom has been felt in China in the last few years with phones being installed in 26% of homes in 2001, compared to only 8% in 1997. Mobile phones have grown as well, with 11% of people using them in 2001 as compared to 1% in 1997. But Internet access is the biggest increase with 46 million people having access in 2002 from only 620,000 in 1997.

Conclusion:
China is likely to achieve all of the MDGs, some even ahead of schedule. However there are still areas needing attention. China has a strong commitment to achieving all of the MDGs and the international community should be willing to help them, especially with advice on how to implement policies.