ABSTRACT

The United Nations has treated development as one of the major missions after its birth, and has made great contributions to global development through hard efforts for decades. In 2000, world leaders gathered in New York and signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration. During this meeting, world leaders agreed on a set of time-bound goals and targets to eradicate poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. These goals and targets are placed at the heart of the global agenda and are referred to as the Millennium Development Goals（MDGs）. The year of 2015 is the final year of the implementation of MDGs and also the start of the new Sustainable Development Goals（SDGs）. On September 25th 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit was held at the New York and 193 member states formally adopted the SDGs. The SDGs is a new set of 17 development goals aimed at addressing the development of social, economic and environmental dimensions in an integrated manner from 2015 to 2030. The SDGs aims to turn the world into a path of sustainable development.

Both the MDGs and the 2030 SDGs pay great attention to eradicate poverty and hunger. In the MDGs, the eradication of poverty and hun ger is the primary objective. While the core spirit of the 2030 SDGs is sustainable, the issue of poverty and hunger remains highly concerned. Over the past 15 years, China has made great efforts to implement the MDGs and has obtained remarkable achievements of 13 aspects. For example, from 1990 to 2011, the number of people under poverty line in China fell by 439 million, accounting for two-thirds of the world's total poverty reductions in the same period. Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly said that the global implementation of the MDGs cannot make such achievement as today without China's outstanding performances. Another example is that China's grain production has been increased continuously since 2004. With less than 10% of world's arable land, China has succeeded to feed 20% of world population. While China is achieving its own development goals, China also actively engage in South-South cooperation to provide help to more than 120 development countries to implement the MDGs. Since the implementation of the MDGs have been closed and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development have just been started, it is necessary to study and summarize the basic situation, experiences and practices of the implementation of the MDGs in China. This will not only help China to better achieve the 2030 SDGs, but also provide relevant experiences for the development of other countries.

Focusing on China, the book studies the basic situation, experiences, practices and challenges of the implementation of the target 1C（halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger）of the goal 1（to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger）of the MDGs and the goal 2（End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture）of the 2030 SDGs. The first chapter introduces China's basic achievements, experiences and future initiatives in“end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. The follow-up chapters detail each target-related aspect and try to sort out relevant contents by examining the mechanism of China's achievement of the MDGs. Chapter 2 describes the progress and contributions of eradicating poverty and hunger in China. Chapter 3 is about the achievements, experiences and challenges of improving nutrition in China. Chapter 4 introduces the practice of achiving food security in China. Food production is the basic method to eliminate poverty and hunger. To summary China's practice of ensuring food security helps to understand China's achievements in achieving the MDGs. Chapter 5 examines the grain productivity behind food security in China. First, we use an econometric model to explore the characteristics of the grain productivity. Then we summarize the important measures of ensuring China's food security. Chapter 6 introduces the practice of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics from agricultural resources, rural factor market, new agricultural management system, agricultural development mode and agricultural science and technology. Chapter 7 focuses China's agricultural trade policy. After all, good agricultural markets will drive food from surplus areas to scarce areas, thus ensuring food availability.