SDGPP in China

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

These 17 Goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, while including new areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities. The goals are interconnected – often the key to success on one will involve tackling issues more commonly associated with another.

The SDGs work in the spirit of partnership and pragmatism to make the right choices now to improve life, in a sustainable way, for future generations. They provide clear guidelines and targets for all countries to adopt in accordance with their own priorities and the environmental challenges of the world at large. The SDGs are an inclusive agenda. They tackle the root causes of poverty and unite us together to make a positive change for both people and planet.

Progress

• Reducing extreme poverty (getting 13.86 million Chinese people out of extreme poverty) in 2018;
• Decrease in poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line from 10.2% in 2012 to 1.7% in 2018.  

Challenges

• The total rural poor population remained high (16.60 million).   

SDG priorities

• Setting clear poverty reduction goals;
• Registering the poverty-stricken population systematically and getting accurate data;
• Implementing the targeted poverty alleviation strategy.

Progress

•  Decrease in undernourishment ratio of population from 11.1% in 2011 to 8.7% in 2016;
•  Decrease in ratio of stunting children under the age of 5 from 9.8% in 2008 to 8.1% in 2013;
•  Rise in cereal yield from 5,707 kg per hectare in 2011 to 6,029 kg per hectare in 2016.

Challenges

•  Low exclusive breastfeeding ratio for children under 6 months, and still dropping from 27.6% in 2008 to 18.6% in 2013;
•  Increasing number of anemia cases among women of reproductive age (15-49 years old) from 19.8% in 2011 to 26.4% in 2016;
•  Increasing ratio of overweight children under the age of 5 from 5.9% in 2005 to 6.6% in 2010.                                                                      

 SDG priorities

•  Fostering sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture development;
•  Reducing rural poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition;
•  Promoting one-health approach for sustainable agricultural trade and improved public health;
•  Fostering regional and international agriculture cooperation.

Progress

• Decrease in maternal mortality ratio  from 35 per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 27 in 2015;
• Decrease of neonatal mortality rate   from 8.4 per 1,000 live births in 2010 to 4.7 in 2017;
• Decrease in mortality rate of children under the age of 5  from 15.8 per 1,000 live births in 2010 to 9.3 in 2017.

Challenges 

• Increase in proportion of population spending more than 25% of household consumption or income on out-of-pocket health care expenditure from 2.748% in 2000 to 4.755% in 2007;
• Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution, age standardized, stays at 112.7 per 100,000 persons in 2016.

SDG priorities

• Reducing health inequality;
•  Strengthening health systems towards universal health coverage;
•  Reducing morbidity and mortality from major diseases and risks of public health importance;
•  Strengthening regulatory capacity in health services, food safety and health products and technologies;
•  Promoting the healthy cities movement and the attainment of health in all policies;
• Addressing the impact of the environment and climate change on health;
• Enhancing China’s contribution to global health.

Progress

• Increase in preprimary school enrollment rate  from 69.57% in 2012 to 85.96% in 2017;
• Increase in tertiary school enrollment rate from 28.04% in 2012 to 51.01% in 2017.

Challenges

• Increase in pupil-teacher ratio of tertiary schools from 14.67 in 2005 to 19.49 in 2011.

SDG priorities

•  Narrowing the urban-rural education gap,  achieving equitable delivery of basic public education services in rural and urban areas, and ensuring equal rights of less-privileged groups to compulsory education;
• Expanding public and welfare-oriented preschool education resources, promoting the development of public kindergartens, and strengthening public welfare-oriented preschool education in rural areas;
•  Improving the quality of kindergarten teachers;
• Gradually waiving all tuition and miscellaneous fees at schools providing secondary vocational education and making dynamic adjustments of student grant coverage and subsidy levels;
• Promoting work-study integration and school-enterprise cooperation in the cultivation of skilled workers and technical talents, and adopting modern corporate apprenticeships;
• Protecting everyone’s right to education, including that of vulnerable groups; 
• Further reducing adult illiteracy and preventing new incidences of youth illiteracy;
• Deepening education reforms, improving the quality of education and strengthening school sports and art education;
• sStrengthening students’ sense of social responsibility, creativity, and practical ability as a priority in national education;
• Upgrading facilities and equipment of underperforming and boarding schools.

Progress

• Ratio of female contributing family workers to female employment dropped from 23.3% in 2008 to 13.22% in 2018.
• Increase in proportion of seats held by women in national parliament from 21.35% in 2008 to 24.9% in 2018.

Challenges

• Ratio of female contributing family workers to female employment is significantly higher comparing to ratio of male workers to male employment. 

SDG priorities

• Protecting women’s and girl’s rights to education, labor security, marriage and family, social welfare, health and medical care, etc.;
• Raising public awareness on gender equality and eradicating all forms of discrimination and prejudice against women and girls;
• Preventing and curbing all forms of violence against women and girls;  combatting criminal activities against women and girls, including trafficking and coerced prostitution; timely handling cases of violation of women’s rights and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of women and girls;
• Implementing the Marriage Law and related laws and regulations, prohibiting child marriage, underage marriage, marriage upon arbitrary decision by any third party, mercenary marriage, and any other acts of interference in the freedom of marriage;
•  Protecting women’s and girl’s rights to life and health;
• Strengthening women’s employment and entrepreneurship capabilities, supporting women’s return to work after giving birth, and encouraging employers to help employees balance work and family;
• Vigorously promoting community public service system and developing public childcare services;
•  Advocating for family burden-sharing between men and women in light of gender equality;
• Formulating and improving laws, regulations and policies that promote women’s participation in decision making and management;
• Expanding channels of women’s participation in decision making and management;
• Intensifying women’s and children’s health care services by improving services for women’s reproductive health, ensuring safe delivery, and offering high-quality family planning services.

Progress

• Increase in the  proportion of people in rural area using at least basic drinking water services  from 74.52% in 2005 to 96.18% in 2015;
• Increase in the  proportion of people using at least basic sanitation services  from 65.15% in 2005 to 75.04% in 2015;
• Increase in the  proportion of people using safely managed sanitation services  from 46.63% in 2010 to 59.69% in 2015.

Challenges

• Less than 60% of the whole population has access to safely managed sanitation services;
•  Nearly  25% of the population  lacks access to  basic sanitation services.

SDG priorities

• Improving the safety of drinking water in rural areas;
• Implementing the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan to increase the proportions of good quality water in key river basins and coastal water areas and qualified treatment of sewage water;
• Intensifying monitoring of key functional water zones and sewage discharge outlets and strengthening categorized and tiered management of functional water zones;
• Building a water-saving society in all-round way by enforcing strictest water resources management system, strengthening water demand and water consumption management, and exercising dual control of total volume and intensity of water resource consumption;
• Improving the water resource management system that combines river basin management and administrative area management and enhancing the role of comprehensive river basin management in water governance;
• Building a national ecological security framework to protect and restore water-related ecosystems by managing the overuse of ground water in some areas;
•  Promoting working mechanism that involves water users’ participation and support, strengthening and urging the participation of water users and local communities in improving water and sanitation management.

Progress

• Considerable investments in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) (1,527 FCVs were produced across multiple sites in China in 2018);
• Increase in the proportion of population with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking.

Challenges

• Drop in renewable energy consumption rate  from 18.2% in 2005 to 12.41% in 2015.

SDG priorities

•  Ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services;
•  Reforming and restructuring urban and rural power grids, focusing on upgrading of grids for small towns and rural centers and ensuring full rural power coverage by 2020;
•  Advancing welfare-oriented energy policy by accelerating poverty reduction programs through photovoltaic technology and energy development in poverty-stricken areas;
• By 2030, increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to about 20 percent;
• Optimizing the energy mix by improving fossil-fuel efficiency and increasing the share of clean energy consumption, so that non-fossil fuels and natural gas become the main energy sources;
• Reforming and restructuring the energy industry through the development of the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence;
• Advancing the low-carbon and green urbanization model based on ecological progress and setting-up a modern energy system;
•  Building energy management,  measurement and online consumption monitoring systems, to  assess and increase energy efficiency;

Progress

• Stable unemployment rate of total labor force within the range of 4.36% to 4.714% during 2008 and 2018;
• Increase in GDP per person employed  from US$13,952 (constant 2011 PPP $) in 2008 to US$29,732 in 2018.

Challenges

• Decline in GDP per capita growth from 10.1% in 2010 to 6.3% in 2017.

SDG priorities

• Focusing on supply-side structural reform to expand effective supply and meet effective demand;
• Accelerating the formation of institutions, mechanisms, and development models that steer the new normal in economic development;  
• Ensuring moderate- and high-speed economic growth and moderate- and high-level of production;
•  Implementing fully the five priority tasks of cutting overcapacity, reducing excess inventory, deleveraging, lowering costs, and strengthening points of weakness, to promote economic transformation and sustainable development;
• Supporting the development, transformation, and upgrading of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and promoting mass entrepreneurship and innovation;
• Accelerating the building of incubator bases for small and micro enterprises;
•  Fostering SMEs’ intellectual development  and building effective platforms  for international cooperation;
• Improving the environment quality, and  decoupling economic growth form environmental degradation while maintaining moderate and high-speed economic growth;
• Increasing labor force participation rate through implementation of the classification policy;
• Improving employment and entrepreneurship services and launching a lifelong vocational training initiative;
• Promoting employment and entrepreneurship for university graduates and improving professional skills of new-generation migrant workers;
• Combatting  illegal and criminal activities such as child labor and forced labor in accordance with law and providing special protection for underage workers aged between 16 and 18;
• Enhancing safety monitoring, inspection and enforcement, reinforcing risk-level control and potential risk detection, strengthening supervision over enterprises with high risks of occupational diseases, and conducting safety education campaigns to raise public awareness;
• Promoting growth and employment through tourism, incorporating the development of tourism into national economic and social development planning,  formulating and  implementing industrial policies that promote sustainable development of tourism.

Progress

• Improving capacity in reducing disaster risks and improving resilience in China and abroad through Disaster Risk Management Initiatives funded by $17 million form the Government of China.
• Increase in Research& Development expenditure rate of GDP  from 1.369% in 2006 to 2.107% in 2016;

Challenges

• Value added of manufacturing dropped from 32.37% of GDP in 2007 to 29.34% in 2017.

SDG priorities

• Accelerating the improvement of a safe, efficient, smart, green and interconnected modern network of infrastructure.
• Implementing the Made in China 2025 strategy, promoting technological transformation and upgrading; transforming and upgrading traditional industries, and improving the quality and effectiveness of the manufacturing industry;
• Accelerating the building of financial infrastructure, improving financial services for key sectors, and diversifying financing channels for small and micro enterprises;
• Upgrading infrastructure for water conservancy, railway, road, water transportation, civil  and general-purpose aviation, pipelines, and postal service;
• Promoting a low-carbon pattern in industrial energy consumption, popularizing new energy sources and improving the efficiency of water resource utilization
• Establishing a mechanism of indexes and constraints on equipment size, technology and technique, energy consumption, environmental protection, quality and safety to eliminate outdated industrial capacity;
• Implementing the National Innovation-Driven Development Strategy.

Progress

• Decline in average transaction cost of sending remittances to China from US$12.012 in 2012 to US$9.997 in 2017.

Challenges

• Growing inequality in income distribution, household wealth and human capital, with a Gini coefficient of 0.473 (2013); 
• Persisting interprovincial inequalities, leading to urban-rural divide, with people in urban households on average earning 2.8 times as much as those in rural households;

• Persisting earning gaps between men and women and between different age groups.

SDG priorities

• Implementing policies that narrow income gaps and substantially increase the income of workers with low-income;
• Safeguarding social equity and justice and protecting people’s rights to equal participation and equal development;
• Advancing scientific and democratic legislation to build a complete legal and regulatory system;
• Creating and improving the institutional environment for fair and healthy competition and equal access to capital and market opportunities;
• Establishing a more equitable and sustainable social protection system that better protects the rights and interests of vulnerable social groups such as women, minors, and people with disabilities;
• Gradually improving a modern taxation system that promotes social equity and justice and inclusive economic growth;
• Improving the dynamic social protection system that meets people’s basic needs;
• Reforming and improving the financial regulatory framework to keep pace with the development of modern financial markets.
• Advancing reform of the household registration system and making basic public services equally accessible to all.
• Improving the mechanisms that turn rural moving population into urban citizens to encourage more people to merge into the urban life.

Progress

• Decline in the proportion of population living in slums from 32.9% in 2005 to 25.2% in 2014.

Challenges

• Air pollution levels remain high ( 56.85 and 56.33 micrograms per cubic meter in 2005 and  2016 respectively).

SDG priorities

• Advancing the development of public rental housing
• By 2020, generally completing the rebuilding of rundown areas, villages in cities and dilapidated houses;
•   Revamping dilapidated houses and subsidizing the maintenance, consolidation and revamping of dilapidated houses of poor farmers in rural areas;
• Implementing the “public transport first” strategy, improving the barrier-free public transport system, and promoting the establishment of sustainable urban transport system;
• By 2020, completing a modern urban public transport system to meet the requirement of a moderately prosperous society;
• Advancing people-oriented urbanization and improving city planning, construction and management.
• By 2020, improving urban planning by building urban clusters, small and medium-sized cities, and small townships,  along with harmonious, livable, dynamic, and unique urban areas.
• Improving the protection of intangible cultural heritage and organizing seminars, workshops, and training courses on intangible cultural heritage for 100,000 person-times by 2020;
• Reducing disaster impact and offering special protection for affected vulnerable groups in accordance with laws and regulations;
• Preventing and controlling floods, and reducing death tolls, number of affected people, and economic losses resulted from floods.
• Proactively promoting greening construction in urban and rural areas by continually increasing per capita green park space;
• Comprehensively elevating the management level of urban household waste and improving rural household waste treatment.

Progress

•  Decrease in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission per unit of GDP  by 5% and 6.6% respectively; decrease in chemical oxygen demand, emissions of ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by 2.6%, 2.9%, 5.6%, and 4.0% respectively (2016).

Challenges

• Adjusted net savings dropped from 32.67% of GNI in 2009 to 22.86% in 2016;
• Forest rents dropped from 0.225% of GDP in 2008 to 0.115% in 2016.

SDG priorities

• Preserving the fine Chinese tradition of frugality and advocating for sustainable consumption culture;
• Advancing legislation on sustainable consumption and green standards setting;
• Encouraging and guiding consumers  on sustainable consumption through pricing, taxation, fees and other means;
• Controlling the total volume of energy and resource consumption, optimizing the structure of utilization, and substantially increasing the secondary utilization of energy and resources;
• Accelerating the establishment of a natural resources property rights system and an assessment and compensation system for ecological damages;
• Substantially reducing per capita food wastes  in sales and consumption and food losses  in production, processing, circulation and supply, including post-harvest losses, through policy guidance, technological innovation, and changed consumption models;
• Achieving the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle and minimizing their adverse impacts on human health and the environment;
• Substantially improving the level of green chemical industry technologies;
• Vigorously promoting cyclic economy;
• Encouraging and promoting a conservation-oriented consumption pattern;
• Controlling the production and release of industrial solid wastes and urban wastes;
• Substantially reducing waste release through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse;
• Improving the cyclic use of major wastes and reducing dependence on primary resources;
• Fully enforcing the extended producer responsibility system, encouraging enterprises to implement the concept of sustainable development in production and management, strengthening green management throughout the product life cycle;
• Supporting enterprises’ efforts to advance green design, developing green products, and incorporating sustainable information into the report cycle;
• Vigorously improving the government procurement system to fulfill the goals for socio-economic development;
• Expanding the scope and scale of green procurement;
• Advancing green education, promoting the awareness of ecological civilization among the people, and building a resource-efficient and environment-friendly society.

Progress

• Eliminating 2,907 tons of Ozone Depleting Substance (ODS) in the refrigeration and solvent sectors in 2018;
• Reducing national carbon dioxide emissions and increasing the number of hectares of land covered by protected area measures;  
• Reducing the consumption of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) by companies to 1,013.95;
• Considerable investments in solar energy (more than US$85 billion in 2017 accounting for 50% of global investment). 

Challenges

• Increasing volumes of carbon emissions (approx. 30% of global CO2 emissions);
• Increased use of coal, gas, and oil; 
• Persisting vulnerability to extreme weather events caused by the climate change, which annually affect over 300 million people and cause a 1 to 2 per cent drop in GDP; 
• Persisting pollution and urbanization resulting in more fragile ecosystems (about 95 per cent of the 10 million poorest people in China live in ecologically-fragile zones and are most adversely affected by disasters). 

SDG priorities

• Actively adapting to climate change and strengthening resistance capacity to climate risks in agriculture, forestry, water resources and other key fields, as well as cities, coastal regions and ecologically vulnerable areas;
• Gradually establishing a forecast, warning, and disaster prevention and reduction system, accelerating the full coverage of meteorological early warnings, and strengthen climate resilience;
• Integrating the implementation of “intended nationally determined contributions” into national strategies and plans, formulating the Work Plan for Greenhouse Gas Emission Control during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, and taking climate mitigation actions as a driving force for China to shift to a new model of economic growth and consumption pattern and advancing environmental protection and ecological progress;
• Improving education and publicity on climate change and mitigation and environmental protection, spreading knowledge about climate change and low-carbon development, and encouraging public participation in climate actions.

Progress

• Launch of the marine strategy in 2018, covering water pollution, land development and coastal conservation, and providing a framework for managing regions under pressure;
• Increasing regulation for fishing industry and bringing distant water fishing fleet in line with the international norms, with standardized logs, monitoring of vessel locations, and catch certification; 
• Creating national marine ranching pilots aimed at re-stocking fish by releasing juveniles; environmental remediation, such as algae and seagrass plantation; and exercising effective control and management.

Challenges

• Insignificant increase in marine protected areas  from 3.77% of territorial waters in 2016 to 5.41% in 2017;

SDG priorities

• Advancing joint prevention, joint control and comprehensive management of land and marine pollution;
• Controlling and managing pollution in rivers flowing into the sea and at estuaries;
• Strictly controlling marine pollution resulted from ships, mariculture, and marine debris;
• Gradually launching pilot programs to control the total volume of pollution in key waters and expanding sea areas with first-grade and second-grade water quality;
• Promoting ecosystem-based marine management by strengthening the protection of major typical ecosystem, scientifically drawing a red line on marine ecosystem protection, and improving the network of marine reserves;
• Establishing a nationwide, real-time, online monitoring system for marine environment, and conducting research on marine ecological compensation and indemnity mechanism;
• Taking a holistic approach to minimize the area and scope of ocean acidification;
• Drawing up a more effective action plan based on scientific assessments of the impacts of climate change and human activity on marine environment;
• Improving the protection and management of fishing resources and implementing science-based management plans, with the aim of restoring fish stocks in the shortest time, at least to levels that can produce maximum sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics;
• Strictly controlling fishing intensity, imposing moratorium, and making sustainable use of the existing fisheries resources.

Progress

• Expansion of forest area from 20.7% of land area in 2006 to 22.4% in 2016.

Challenges

• Shrinkage of terrestrial and marine protected areas from 15.94% of total territorial area in 2016 to 14.59% in 2017;
• Shrinkage of terrestrial protected areas from 17.08% of total land area in 2016 to 15.45% in 2017.

SDG priorities

• Maintaining ecological water levels in wetlands and estuaries;
• Protection and restoration of the biological system in wetlands, rivers, and lakes;
• Establishing a protection system for wetlands and a protection and restoration system for degraded wetlands, and promoting the rational use of wetlands;
• Launching a large-scale land greening campaign, focusing on key forestry projects, improving the protection system for natural forest, comprehensively prohibiting commercial cutting of natural forests, and protecting and cultivating the forest ecosystem;
• Actively participating in the demonstration projects of zero growth in land deterioration under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification;
• Advancing comprehensive management of desertification, rock desertification and soil erosion, preventing desert encroachment, expanding the areas where desertification is under sound management, and strengthening ecological protection in desert areas;
• Comprehensively improving the stability and ecological services function of the natural ecosystem of mountain areas to safeguard eco-security;
• Building a national germplasm bank of forest resources, facilitating the formation of standardized germplasm preservation systems;
• Improving forest parks construction and management system, and promoting sharing and utilization of forest biodiversity resources;
• Launching major projects of biodiversity protection;
• Strengthening the construction and management of natural reserves, and intensifying the efforts to protect typical ecosystem, species, gene and landscape diversity.

Progress

• Drop in intentional homicides from 1.35 per 100,000 people in 2006 to 0.62 in 2016.

Challenges

• Persisting arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance of human right defenders;
• Existing over-regulation of the internet, mass media and academia.

SDG priorities

• Eliminating the cases of severe violent crimes, and, in accordance with law, fighting against all criminal activities that threaten people’s lives and security;
• Implementing the Law on the Protection of Minors to  combat illegal and criminal activities against children;
• Deepening judicial reforms to establish a judicial system that is just and effective; 
• Improving the judicial protection of rights and the judicial supervision over government power.
• Establish a public legal service system that covers both urban and rural areas.
• Strengthening international cooperation on the transfer of sentenced persons, signing of treaties on the transfer of sentenced persons, and strengthening cooperation with relevant countries on  combatting transnational crimes;

Progress

• Leap in the Internet penetration from 16% of population in 2007 to 54.3% in 2017;
• Increase of overall level of statistical capacity  from 61.11 points in 2008 to 77.78 points in 2018.

Challenges

• Drop in net inflows of foreign direct investment  from 4.399% of GDP in 2007 to 1.472% in 2017;
• Decrease in the export of goods and services  from 35.39% GDP in 2007 to 19.76% in 2017.

SDG priorities

• Promoting Multilateral Tax Center jointly established by China’s State Administration of Taxation and OECD to provide training courses and technical aid on taxation for tax officials of other developing countries;
• Joining the global effort to implement the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and encourage developed countries to  fulfill their Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments with related timetables and road maps and provide assistance to developing countries in terms of capital, technology, and capacity building;
• Actively participating in South-South Cooperation by operationalizing the Assistance Fund for South-South Cooperation, and implementing China-UN Fund for Peace and Development;
• Honoring the commitment of exempting the outstanding debt on intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the relevant least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries;
• Improving investment promotion and facilitation policies and service systems to facilitate Chinese enterprises’ investment in least developed countries;
• Advancing the construction of innovation demonstration zones for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to form duplicable and scalable experiences and share China’s development concepts and experience with other countries;
• Enhancing technological cooperation with other developing countries on pollution monitoring, prevention and control;
• Promoting the transfer and local application of advanced applicable technologies in developing countries within the South-South Cooperation framework.