2020 Target: No poor people in Hunnan

KUNMING, China — The members of the Philippine Association of Women Legislators Foundation who are in this country upon invitation of the Communist Party of China, bear within them the picture of millions of Filipinos living below the poverty line. Officials from the Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development of Yunnan province told the 15 Filipina lawmakers they share the same burden. But they’re doing more for their poor. They’re targeting not having any more poor people by 2020. Could the same projection be made by Philippine government officials?

The legislators were presented China’s  poverty alleviation program. What was made clear was that the national government’s priority is improving the living conditions of the poor, especially those living in the rural areas. In fact, the day previous, the women were taken to the countryside, to the Vingxiu community of Fenghuang sub-district. For a long time living in a poor farming area, now, with  government support, the 1,760 residents’ lives could not be better. All children attend school; there are medical and social services, housing (the villagers live in concrete two-story apartments they helped build, while before they lived in dilapidated houses), roads and water systems, and good income. “The solution to the poverty problem,” a leader in the community center said, “is modernizing rural areas.” This means modernizing farming methods to begin with. A result is the stopping of the exodus to the city of jobless villagers, especially the young.

In the province of Yunnan, which has a population of 47 million people, 5.9 million are still under the poverty line. The figure is a vast improvement over that of previous years with the government spending, for example, in 2011, Y22.3 billion or $3.5 billion for education, health, and economic programs. Part of this amount was used for students’ nutrition, study allowances, and training (6.37 Chinese Yuan is equivalent to $1).

The delegation was brought to the Dayingjie Sub-District to view the West Gucheng Village as proof that farmers, assisted by the national and local governments, and by their own industry, can live like, from our standard, “millionaires.” It is  an unbelievable subdivision of more than 1,000 two-story units that look very expensive. Cooperatives enabled the farmers to own the units that are built on government land.

The head of the Yunnan Provincial Women’s Federation also spoke of programs to help women and girls. These include giving support to girls to finish schooling, skills training, and securing soft loans for women to start their own business.

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In her remarks before the speakers at a conference venue in this city which is the capital of Yunnan province, Rep. Gina de Venecia, head of delegation, said China’s “exceptional journey to achieve robust economic growth is indeed remarkable. Since your first reforms in 1979, China’s economy has grown 14 times in real terms; and by 2006, it has pulled at least 400 million people out of poverty and into China’s new middle class.

“In all the emerging countries, administrative modernization is imperative – if we are to raise our countries’ global competitiveness.” In the Philippines, she said, “The key goal we set for ourselves is to empower low-income Filipinos to help themselves – by expanding their access to primary health care, basic education, decent jobs, and livelihood opportunities.”

She then cited the country’s successful human development programs as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino  or the conditional cash-transfer program, the Self-Employment Assistance or Kaunlaran that gives seed capital to small business ventures of poor Filipinos, and the trainings provided by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority to enable them to seek gainful employment.

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I asked Rep. Erlinda Santiago of SAGIP party-list for her comment on the Yunnan poverty alleviation program. SAGIP is the acronym for Social Amelioration and Genuine Intervention in Poverty. She said China’s success is due to  “its having a single class society. It’s very easy for them to discipline their people. Plus they have the resources to support their program. By 2020 the Communist Party of China aims to end poverty in the country. In the next five years, they will invest Y50 billion to improve housing, health insurances and improve salaries or the people’s income. I’m impressed by what they do for rural communities.”

Angie Kato of Akbayan party-list favors the Chinese leaders’ doing research on the real needs of people. “So they have a wish list of these needs. They have a holistic approach – dealing and solving three sectors simultaneously –  health, education, and the economic sectors, not on a piecemeal basis.”

Emi de Jesus of Gabriela took note of 800,000 women having been trained for domestic work such as caregiving and housekeeping, but she would have wanted to hear about the place of women in production.

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Giving the officials a preview of the Filipino women’s status, Rep. Linabelle Ruth R. Villarica, chair of the House committee on women and gender equality and vice-chair of the House committee on basic education and culture, said “Twenty years after the Beijing Platform of Action, the lives of Filipino women have greatly improved in some aspects and there has been a narrowing of the gender gap in the fields of education, political participation and peace and institutional mechanisms. In 2013, the Philippines ranked 5^th in the Global Gender Index of the World Economic Forum. We were the only Asian country in the top ten. We were also the only country in Asia and the Pacific that have closed the gender gap in both education and health. Furthermore, we were ranked first in the areas of educational attainment and life expectancy.

“In terms of legislation, we have passed landmark laws like the passage of the Magna Carta of Women which is the most comprehensive women’s human rights law and in the national translation of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Another important law is the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law which was a 14-year struggle in our country. It ensures observance of human rights, particularly women’s economic,  social and cultural rights, including the right to health and education.”

Villarica talked of bills approved on the committee level, which are deemed important and urgent in the advancement of women’s rights. These are on the creation of crisis centers in every province and city; amending the Anti-Mail Order Bride Law to stop the matching of Filipinas done through emails or websites; amending the Anti-Violence Against Women  law to cover cases of “electronic violence”; seeking to cover peer-to-peer sexual harassment; punishing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and identity, and amending provisions in the Family Code which give preference to the decision of the husband over that of the wife in the administration of the conjugal and community property and parental authority over common children.

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