The 63rd United Nations General Assembly has invited more than 100 heads of state and government leaders to a high-level meeting starting today to conduct the interim assessment of the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the high-level meeting and general debate to explain China's stance in the world's most important political arena.

Eight years ago, leaders attending the UN Millennium Assembly signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration on September 25, 2000, pledging to achieve "decisive progress" in reaching the MDGs of eradicating extreme poverty worldwide, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.

After eight years of hard work, definite progress has been made in the implementation of the plan. For example, many countries are now close to reaching the goal of universal primary education; and the number of people living below $1 a day has been reduced from 1.25 billion in 1990 to less than 1 billion.

However, as the UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2008 points out, alongside the successes are an array of goals and targets that are likely to be missed. For instance, poverty reduction has progressed fast in East Asia and South Asia but very slowly in the sub-Saharan region, while Chile appears to be the only Latin American nation likely to fully reach the MDGs by 2015.

Besides, soaring prices of food and energy resources, a global economic slowdown and developing nations' growing inflationary pressures, as well as more frequent extreme weather conditions and a higher incidence of natural disasters so far this year all posed serious challenges to efforts to achieve the MDGs. Rising food prices alone added 100 million people to the worldwide population in poverty, making the goal of eradicating poverty harder to reach.

During the past eight years China, as the largest developing country in the world, has made its unique contribution to global efforts to realize the MDGs. It has not only focused on economic development, with issues concerning agriculture, rural development and farmers always handled as priorities, but also carried out educational, cultural and environmental development in rural areas as part of the nationwide drive to advance scientific, harmonious and peaceful development. With one-fifth of the world's population, China, by simply handling its own development well, makes a major contribution to overall global progress.

China has achieved the goal of halving the number of its people in poverty ahead of schedule, offering the world a better chance to achieve the MDGs by 2015. Meanwhile, China has been assisting other developing nations, particularly in Africa, which is the key area in terms of efforts to realize the MDGs.