The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) will upgrade cooperation and assistance to China, top officials from the agency said.

The UNDP, the largest UN organization, will expand its support to China in coming years, focusing on poverty eradication, environmental protection, training and HIV/AIDS control.

The agency will also help China prepare for the entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and carry out occupational training and re-training programmes for Chinese workers who lose their jobs. The announcement came from Hafiz Pasha, UNDP assistant administrator and regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

The regional director was in Beijing last week for a UNDP Asia-Pacific regional meeting, which discussed future directions for UNDP work in the region.

UNDP officials from its headquarters in New York and representatives from the Asia-Pacific region attended the meeting, as did the UNDP's Administrator Mark Malloch Brown.

During their stay in Beijing, the administrator and the newly appointed Pasha held talks with senior Chinese leaders to discuss future cooperation.

According to Brown, the major challenges facing countries in the region, including China, are good governance, globalization, environmental protection, information technology, coping with natural disasters and HIV/AIDS control.

Every country in the region, whatever their political system, is struggling to improve basic services, such as education and health care, said Brown.

When talking about how globalization will affect China, he stressed joining the WTO will be a big challenge.

The UNDP will help China sustain its incredible growth momentum to continue its success, said Pasha.

The UNDP started cooperation with China in 1979, and was the first UN organization to set up in the country.

Since then, it has brought into China more than US$800 million through various forms of co-operation.

UNDP China has been supporting the Chinese authorities in their pursuit of poverty eradication, the advancement of women, environmental protection, energy development, and good governance, said UNDP officials.

In one recent development, the UNDP launched a project using information and communication technology to reduce poverty in rural China.

The UNDP attaches great importance to environmental protection, and about half of its collaborative programmes with China are focused in this area.

Early this year, it launched a project to help China's township and village enterprises save energy and control greenhouse gas emissions.

This US$8 million project, funded by the Global Environment Facility, covers four types of industries, cement and brick making, metal casting and coking.

The total energy consumption by these industries alone amounts to over 50 percent of the total consumption by township and village factories. Their greenhouse gas emissions amounted to over 104 million tons in 1995.

The project, in complement with a series of initiatives by the Chinese government, aims to intervene to remove policy, technology, market and finance barriers to controlling emissions.

It is anticipated that by the completion of the projects, improved production techniques will have led to energy savings in the four sectors of between 20 and 60 percent.

The project will also lead to a significant and sustained increase in commercial funding for energy efficiency initiatives run by township and village enterprises.

(China Daily 04/24/2001)