Beijing - The United Nations on Sunday urged the Chinese government to spend more on public services to offset the effects of growing wealth gaps. "Comprehensive institutional and policy reforms are essential for China to provide its people with access to improved health services, education, social security and public employment services," the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said a the launch of its latest China Human Development Report.
"With budget revenues higher than 20 per cent of GDP, with a high national savings rate and with 2 trillion dollars in official reserves, China now has the resources to make equitable provision of key public services to all China's people a reality," said Khalid Malik, the UNDP representative in China.
"The government's agenda places priority on providing basic services, and its fast-paced actions to do so will go a long way to ease the challenges at home and abroad from the financial crisis and economic slowdown," Malik said.
"These timely actions can make people feel more secure to consume, and in turn, help realize China's urgent goal of keeping a high economic growth rate," he said.
The report, Access For All: Basic Public Services for 1.3 Billion People, urged China's ruling Communist Party to give all Chinese citizens a "clearly defined set of basic public services framed by common standards".
The UNDP said China should expand education and health care provision for poor areas, provide better services for more than 100 million migrant workers, improve the accountability of local officials and uphold the rule of law.
It outlined China's "huge strides in human development" over the last 30 years but said "major challenges" remain.
"Human development gaps have widened sharply between urban and rural areas, between the prosperous coastal regions and the poorer interior regions, between men and women, and between registered urban residents and urban migrants," it said
"If poor households do not have access to affordable public services of good quality, the income gap between rural and urban areas will continue to translate into gaps in access to health care, education, safe water and other basic services and create the danger of a poverty trap," the report said.
"Without strong action, the great gaps in basic public services and the disparities in human capital that they engender may create permanent divisions that are difficult to reverse," it said.
