In China the literacy rate for women aged 15-24 is 99 percent. [File photo]

There are many remarkable economic statistics about China.

•  China contained 22 percent of the world's population when its reforms began, so the percentage of the world's population directly benefitting from China's rapid economic growth is seven times that of the 3 percent of the world's population in the U.S. or Japan when they began rapid growth.

•  China's 9.9 percent average increase in GDP per capita during the two last five-year plans is the fastest economic growth ever achieved by a major country in human history.

•  In the same period, China's annual average 8.1 percent increase in household consumption, and 8.3 percent annual increase in total consumption, including state expenditure on items vital for quality of life such as education and health, were the fastest of any major economy. Coupled with a life expectancy above that which would be expected from China's GDP per capita, it is evident that China experienced the most rapid increase in living standards of any country.

•  Looking at the purchasing power parities (PPPs) - in other words the real increase in output of steel, cars, transport, services etc - the greatest absolute increase in output ever recorded in single year by the U.S. was in 1999 when it added $567 billion in output. But in 2010 China added $1,126 billion - more than twice the largest increase in output in a single year ever achieved by any other country in human history.

Nevertheless, impressive as such statistics are, from the point of view of human welfare it is another number which dwarfs all others: the contribution of China to the reduction of human poverty not only within its own borders but in its impact on the world. The astonishing fact is that China is responsible for all the overall reduction in the number of people living in absolute poverty in the world!