The China Human Development Report

The China Human Development Report is the first National Human Development Report on the Peoples Republic of China. Drafted by an independent UNDP group of eleven international and Chinese experts, the Report offers a comprehensive discussion of the state of human development in China, while putting special focus on the record of poverty alleviation. Taking its cue from the 1997 global Human Development Report, a first attempt is made in this report to rank provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China according to the Human Development Index. With a population of 1.23 billion and a GDP that quadrupled between 1978 and 1996, China has a huge impact on the social and economic progress of the world. This Report examines how its spectacular economic growth has correlated with human and social development.
The Report summarizes the history and current status of sustainable human development in China, examines outstanding challenges, and makes a number of broad policy recommendations for tackling these challenges. Although China has an admirable record of promoting some aspects of human development, including poverty alleviation and improvements in health and education, the Report shows how China continues to face enormous human development challenges. Some of these are left over from the past, such as the rigid urban-rural divide; others are newly created or complicated by Chinas transition from a planned to a market economy, a process that has been unfolding for the past two decades. The Report also explores recent difficulties encountered in China due to the instability of world market forcesfor example the Asian financial crisisand examines Chinas most serious human development challenges: growing unemployment; rising social and economic inequality; and the absence of a social safety net.
Because this is the first national Human Development Report undertaken for China, it establishes a baseline for all future efforts by discussing a wide spectrum of development issues, including the distribution of income, health care, education and nutrition, population and migration, the status of women, employment, social security provision, the state of the natural environment, and the reform of state enterprises. Highlighting the many causal inter-connections among these various issues, The China Human Development Report is essential reading for all those studying the economic and political development of modern China.