WASHINGTON — World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Tuesday that China, the world’s most populous nation, has “lifted more people out of extreme poverty than any country in the world by far.”
Kim’s speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies focused on the World Bank’s goal of reducing extreme poverty to 3 percent worldwide by 2030.
The abject poverty rate currently is 12 percent, according to the Bank, which operates as a development institution that works with governments around the world to reduce poverty through diverse programs.
Despite the weaker-than-projected global growth this year, Kim is optimistic about the future of anti-poverty efforts. The Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 a day.
In the past two decades, China’s rapid economic growth has lifted around six hundred million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank.
Even though growth in China has slowed in recent years, its 7.7 percent annual GDP growth is still robust.
“Your enemy can not be other institutions, your enemy has to be poverty,” Kim said. “And if your enemy is poverty, then the natural thing to do is to welcome all new players that are interested in developing that kind of infrastructure that will end poverty.”
The World Bank leader said he envisions many joint programs with the China-led development bank and is ready to work on multi-lateral anti-poverty programs.
“I plan to continue my discussions with Chinese and other officials about such collaborations,” Kim said Tuesday, in advance of next week’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.