Chapter 33 3. Poverty eradication should become a universal value

At an international conference in Johannesburg, an African diplomat told me a joke: The United Nations met to discuss how to eradicate poverty in the countries of the world, but no consensus could be reached, and the meeting ended in vain.The reporter asked the chairman of the meeting why it ended in this way?The chairman of the meeting spread his hands and said regretfully: "This is because Americans do not understand the concept of 'countries of the world', and Europeans do not understand the concept of 'elimination of poverty'." This exaggerated story reflects the development China’s view of the West’s inaction in solving the world’s poverty problem: the United States pursues unilateralism, dominates itself, takes ideology in command, promotes and exports its own political model everywhere, and does not have enough enthusiasm for solving the world’s poverty problem.But Microsoft's Bill Gates sees farther. He spends a lot of money to do good, leaving his footprints from the slums in India to the refugee camps in Africa, which also improves Microsoft's international competitive environment.I think if the U.S. government can learn something from Bill Gates' good deeds, maybe it will realize that if the U.S. spends one-tenth of its annual defense budget of about 700 billion U.S. dollars to help the world's poor , The value created by maintaining the image and security of the United States will be far greater than the use of this money for armaments.

Although Europe pursues multilateralism, its policies are weak in addressing world poverty.EU countries subsidize European agriculture heavily, making the export price of many agricultural and animal husbandry products in Europe lower than those in Africa. How can African countries compete? "Cows in Europe can get so much subsidies today, and they are richer than people in Africa," many people in Africa say.The West always requires developing countries to carry out reforms as described in Western economics textbooks, but they themselves do not do so. The huge subsidies that Europe and the United States provide to their own agriculture illustrate this problem.Europe has also failed to come up with effective ideas and measures to solve the poverty problem. Most of its foreign aid attaches political conditions such as democratization, while developing countries have not succeeded in implementing Western democratization, and many have fallen into internal friction or even civil war. more difficult.Another weakness of European foreign aid projects is serious bureaucracy and low overall efficiency.Various projects have to go through cumbersome procedures, from feasibility reports to progress and review at various stages, many activities must be done by European "experts", and as a result, more than half of the aid funds often return to the pockets of Europeans themselves.An official from the Ministry of Industry of Tanzania pointed to an old local school building in Arusha and said to me, "In the past, Western missionaries came here to build a lot of schools, and they didn't have so many procedures. Didn't they get things done?" An ambassador from an African country once told me with a little exaggeration: "We have not finished negotiating one project with the Europeans, but the Chinese have helped us complete three projects."

The tragedy of "9.11" in the United States, which killed some 3,000 people, is heartbreaking, but that is not everything.It is estimated that 18,000 children die of hunger and malnutrition every day in the world, that is to say, children who die every day are equivalent to 6 "9.11" deaths. In October 2007, major western media such as the UK took the disappearance of a little British girl in Portugal as the headline and reported it extensively. 18,000 children die every day in developing countries?Mr. Morris, the former executive director of the United Nations Food Program, is an American with a sense of justice. He once said: "If all the media make headlines tomorrow: 'A total of 45 Boeing 747 airliners crashed today, and all people on board were killed. And the victims are all children, so can the world remain indifferent?" Morris told the world in this vivid language: how serious the problem of global hunger and poverty is.

According to the estimates of the World Bank in 2007, among the 6.5 billion people in the world, nearly 1 billion people earn less than US$1 a day, and about 2.6 billion people earn less than US$2 a day.In other words, more than half of the world's people still live in extreme poverty or considerable poverty.If it is not accurate to use US dollars to calculate the poverty levels of countries in the world, then we can also say this: in today's world, about 1/6 (nearly 1 billion) people are living in extreme poverty, starving all year round, and not having enough to eat; About 1/5 of the people (about 1.3 billion) do not have safe drinking water; more than 1/3 of the people (2.6 billion) do not have basic sanitation facilities, and a total of more than 3 billion people live in poverty.

I was wondering why the most basic issue of poverty eradication was not raised as a human right when the Enlightenment movement in Europe in the 18th century proposed human rights such as freedom, equality, and private property rights.One of the main reasons is probably that for these Enlightenment thinkers, extreme poverty was not their main concern. They represented the emerging propertied class, and at that time, racism, colonialism, and slave trade were all legal. Although the gap between rich and poor in Europe was already large at that time, extreme poverty mainly occurred in the colonies, not in Europe.At that time, the poor and desolate people among the white Europeans also had more opportunities for compensation. For example, they could go to the colonies to take risks and get rich, and go to Africa and America to own their own farms and pastures.

As I mentioned earlier, take France, which is famous for advocating human rights, as an example: the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" in 1789, which was produced under the influence of the Enlightenment, in which "man" and "citizen" refer to Europe in French. White men, excluding women, excluding people of color, excluding Chinese, and excluding the poor.Martin Luther King, the leader of the American civil rights movement, said: "I dream that one day my four children will live in a country that will not be judged by the color of skin, but by the quality of character." He said these When I spoke, it was 187 years after the United States passed the Declaration of Independence, which contained "all men are created equal".

We do not ignore the important role these Western historical documents have played in history, but we must also use the value of "seeking truth from facts" to examine the historical and cultural causes of many world problems today, and explore why the mainstream value system of the West and some developed countries have Both lack enthusiasm for solving the problem of poverty in the third world. The United States has never considered eradicating poverty to be a human rights issue.At best in Europe, the eradication of poverty is seen as the removal of obstacles to the enjoyment of human rights.For China, this is not only a human rights issue, but also a core human rights issue. More importantly, China believes that this is not a theoretical and legal issue, but a political practice issue. China has already done this in practice, and And will continue to do so.The effect of the Chinese model on poverty eradication is significantly better than that of the Western-led development model, and this cognitive difference is the main reason.

Today is the 21st century, but half of the world's population is still in poverty, especially when human beings already have enough resources and wealth to solve this problem, the world still allows this tragedy to continue, which is against humanity It is also a violation of human rights.We must pay attention to the deviation of the world's mainstream value system on this issue, and it is necessary to gradually correct this deviation formed in history.In the past 30 years, China has corrected this deviation with its great practice of eradicating poverty.This also shows that as long as a country seriously treats poverty as a core human right, it can achieve great results in poverty eradication.China's successful experience in the field of poverty alleviation is an important part of China's soft power. We should sum up our experience in this area well and find out some ideas and practices with universal significance. Worldwide poverty alleviation requires China's wisdom.

If the problem of world poverty is not alleviated for a long time, various conflicts in the world may be further intensified in the future. In the summer of 2002, I participated in the World Conference on Sustainable Development held in South Africa. I listened to the discussions of some anti-globalization NGO forums. Their views are often extreme, but they also reflect the world politics from another angle. and gross injustices in the economic order.During the discussion, a radical African scholar said: "Don't get carried away by rich countries. The poor in the world now have three weapons against you. These are endless refugee flows, various infectious diseases and global warming. The more you If you don’t help us, these three weapons will become more and more powerful.” His words won rounds of applause.His views are extreme, but it should be seen that the poverty problem in the world today has been linked to various global problems. Poverty leads to disease, refugee flows, and global climate change. These problems need to be solved by all countries in the world. Otherwise, the prospects for the whole world are not optimistic.

China's own poverty alleviation is still facing various challenges, and there is still a long way to go.We should consider promoting the international community to regard poverty eradication as a core human right and a new universal value while continuing to promote domestic poverty alleviation work, and gradually correct the long-standing deviation of Western mainstream values ​​on this issue. Chinese people's world vision and human spirit.We can even consider promoting the adoption of an international convention on the eradication of extreme poverty within the United Nations human rights system, so that all countries can eventually regard poverty eradication as a core human right and a new universal value.If this can be done, it will be a great thing for China to do for the poor who account for more than half of the world's population.Because once such core human rights and universal values ​​are established through the conclusion of international conventions (this is not an easy task), supporting poverty alleviation becomes an obligation and responsibility, not just a charity, let alone a slogan.

Now the West generally has two reasons for reducing aid to developing countries. One is that developing countries are severely corrupt and cannot provide aid.The second is because Western countries are all democracies, and their domestic voters are "compassion-tired" and unwilling to provide more development assistance, and the government is powerless.But if the West sees the eradication of poverty as a core human right and universal value, these cannot be called reasons. They should find new ways of aid that are less susceptible to corruption to help others, and they need to work hard to convince their own countries People support poverty alleviation worldwide, just as they support civil and political rights, always consider those human rights to be core human rights, and support them under any circumstances. Of course, poor countries themselves must shoulder the primary responsibility for poverty eradication. If they do not live up to their expectations, no matter how much foreign aid is, it will be difficult to play a role.In many developing countries I have visited, their policies often drift between two extremes. They either attribute all problems to Western colonialism and have no responsibility for themselves, or they accept the Western model and everything is done according to the Western model. It was suggested to do it, but the result was that Handan was a toddler. I didn't learn what others were good at, and I lost all my good things.In many poor and backward countries, tribal conflicts and religious conflicts are fierce, the level of corruption is heinous, and the government lacks social integration capabilities.However, poverty alleviation from the perspective of human rights should go beyond these constraints.The international community cannot ignore the extreme poverty of a country's people because of the incompetence of its government.Today the international community has accumulated a lot of practical and effective experience in helping the third world to alleviate poverty.I believe that as long as the entire international community works together, with the wisdom, financial and material resources of the world today, it is entirely possible for the international community to basically solve the problem of extreme poverty in the world within a generation, thereby greatly reducing the serious poverty caused by severe poverty. Various global thorny issues.