China's Children Work Fruitful

Xinhua, 5 May 2002

BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua)—In the Say Yes For Children global campaign, a prelude to the forthcoming United Nations General Assembly's Special Session on Children, over 20 million Chinese participants signed their names recently in a call for safeguard and respect of children's interests and happiness in China and the world at large.

For the last decade, government departments and organizations for children in China have made remarkable achievements in protecting children's rights and promoting children development since it implemented the National Program of Action (NPA) for Child Development in China in the 1990s in 1992.

Official statistics show that the mortality rate of infants and children under the age of five dropped to 3.22 percent and 3.97 percent by 2000, from 5.02 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively, in 1990.

The nine-year compulsory education drive is practiced in about 85 percent of China's territory, and over 190 million people have so far received education since the campaign started some 15 years ago.

Large numbers of child welfare institutes, SOS villages, rehabilitation centers and street children protection stations all over China, along with Project Hope and the Spring Bud Program, have given special care and assistance to distressed children.

In China's southwest Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, over 45 special schools have been built, with some 20,540 disabled students enrolled. The regional attendance rate of school-age blind, deaf and mentally-handicapped children has reached 70 percent by 2001.

China signed two international documents in 1991, namely the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and the Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s, and subsequently formulated the National Program of Action for Child Development in China in the 1990s in 1992.

Experts also pointed out that although China has made great progress in promoting child development, there are still many difficulties in this regard, as China is a populous developing country which is still struggling to modernize.

The Chinese government will manage to realize the three global goals, namely, the reduction of mortality rate of women in child birth, elimination of tetanus of newborn babies and control of HIV/ AIDS, said Xu Shaoshi, deputy secretary-general of the State Council.

China will give priority to several major issues involving children in its future agenda, including narrowing the disparities in child development among different regions, creating a more favorable environment for child development, ensuring health care, education and child protection among the floating population and restraining the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among children.

Last year, the State Council approved a new NPA for child development for the period 2001-2010, which has become the guideline for national action in child development, to further promote healthy and sustainable child development.