CHINA: The UN World Food Programme will halt donations to China by the end of next year as the world's seventh-largest economy boosts its own assistance abroad, according to the programme's chief, Mr James Morris.
China's graduation from WFP food aid after 25 years is a milestone in its development and reforms, including a decade or so of soaring economic growth which has lifted 300 million Chinese out of poverty.
China suffered possibly the world's most devastating famine after Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign of the late 1950s tried to use Communist fervour to modernise China. The movement brought economic ruin and an estimated 30 million people died of hunger.
Although the WFP's plan to scale back its aid to China was not new, Mr Morris's five-day visit to China coincided with comments from the Japanese Foreign Minister, Mr Nobutaka Machimura, that Tokyo would soon review its programme of economic aid to its giant neighbour.
Mr Machimura said last month that Japan should stop giving official development assistance to Beijing in the near future due to China's robust economic growth. - (Reuters)