Building rural roads to eliminate global poverty and promote common development: China Daily editorial

For those keen to know how China has been able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in just a few decades, a white paper Beijing released on Friday highlights one specific, but crucial, aspect of how it was done.

The document titled "China's Rural Roads in the New Era" shares China's experience in this regard and outlines the achievements and vision of rural road development since 2012.

The country has put in place a rural road network in which county roads connect rural and urban areas, township roads link towns, and village roads facilitate travel between households and farmland. The total length of this rural road network was 4.6 million kilometers by the end of 2023, an increase of 21.7 percent over the total length in 2013, enough to circle the equator 115 times.

The fast expansion of the rural road network has provided strong support for the comprehensive development of the rural economy and society in China, as better transport has cleared bottlenecks that had long delayed economic and social development in poor areas.

The country is now in the planning process for making its huge rural road system smart, and its management, operation and maintenance efficient, effective and sustainable, so that it can continually contribute to improving people's well-being and rural development.

Poor transportation remains one of the bottlenecks for economic and social development in many developing countries. China's experience indicates that the input in village roads, if well managed, is by no means a burden on the government, but a worthwhile long-term investment that can help unleash the development potential of rural areas.

In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on "Eradicating?rural poverty?to?implement the 2030 Agenda?for?Sustainable Development". The resolution emphasizes the need to increase poverty reduction efforts through infrastructure construction, among other measures.

Unlike those empty talkers, who only pay lip service to their stated "commitments" to helping developing countries build infrastructure, China has always been a doer in this regard. It has been actively sharing its development experience and helping construct rural road infrastructure in other developing countries over the years.

China has accordingly exchanged and shared its development experiences with other countries through multiple international cooperation mechanisms, and assisted in the construction of rural road infrastructure in developing countries, making positive contributions to global rural roads and poverty reduction.

Since 2018, China has supported 24 developing countries including Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, Namibia, Vanuatu and Niger in highway and bridge construction and maintenance, helping them improve their transport infrastructure.

China has also taken the initiative to build new platforms and mechanisms for global transportation cooperation, and having established a system of standards for highway engineering, it has been applying these in hundreds of projects in dozens of countries around the world.

Unlike those countries which attach strings to their aid, China's assistance in the construction of infrastructure in developing countries is unconditional and focuses on delivering tangible benefits to local people.

As a pioneer of rural roads as a means to eliminate poverty, China upholds the concept of openness and win-win cooperation in the field of rural road infrastructure as a means to realize the United Nations' 2030 sustainable development agenda goal of eliminating global poverty. The country will therefore unswervingly strengthen exchanges and cooperation with other countries in the field of rural roads to help lift people out of poverty worldwide.

By continuing to contribute its wisdom and strength to the global rural roads and poverty reduction cause, the country is committed to jointly drawing a beautiful picture of a community with a shared future for mankind with like-minded countries.