Mr. Chairman,

The Chinese delegation would like to thank you and the bureau for your excellent work, support the statement made by Ecuador on behalf of the G77, and wish the current session a complete success.

Remarkable progress has been made in women’s advancement. Yet we are still plagued by traditional and non-traditional security problems and deep-rooted male chauvinism. Therefore, China endorses the priority theme of the current session: women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work.

In this regard, China would like to make the following observations. First, we need to push for comprehensive and balanced implementation of gender-related goals in the 2030 Agenda, with emphasis on women’s poverty alleviation, employment, education and health care. Second, we need to give strong impetus to innovation and entrepreneurship for the purpose of creating more quality jobs for women. At the same time, we need to improve social protection for women. Third, we need to guide the economic globalization in a healthy direction to make it more open, inclusive and balanced so as to achieve win-win results for the benefit of all, thus ensuring greater and more decent employment opportunities for women from around the world, developing countries in particular. Fourth, we need to create a community of shared future for mankind, which should help mobilize more technical and financial support from developed countries to developing countries in order to help the latter achieve women’s economic empowerment at an early date.

Mr. Chairman,

China strictly adheres to the policy of gender equality and has formulated three “National Program for Women’s Development” and conduct regular assessment and supervision, and continuously promote the cause of women to a higher level. China takes economic development as the foundation and core of women’s advancement. The level of women’s participation in decision-making and management, access to employment and education has been on a constant rise. We are aggressively implementing programs to lift women out of poverty, and carrying out poverty eradication programs in a targeted manner. In 2016, the Chinese rural population in poverty was cut by 12.4 million, half of which being women. We give strong support to women’s employment and entrepreneurship. For example, we have offered entrepreneurship training to 4 million women and provided 310.9 billion RMB of concessional micro-credit loan to 5.76 million women. The Chinese Government paid the discounted interests for those loans in total of 27.1 billion RMB. We mobilize women to take advantage of the new opportunities created by “Internet +”. Women now account for 55% of entrepreneurs in the Internet area and 42.9% of employees in the same area. We have continuously stepped up capacity building of health care facilities for women and children in poverty-stricken areas. We have provided free-of-charge cervical cancer screening for over 60 million rural women and breast cancer screening for over 8 million rural women. Over 70,000 diseased women living in poverty have received government support. China has forcefully implemented its Law against Domestic Violence and other relevant laws and regulations, established and improved mechanisms for evaluating gender equality whenever making new legal framework, so as to ensure the development of women and children better and more equitable.

China is active in promoting women’s participation in global governance and international cooperation. As the chair of G20 in 2016, China successfully hosted Women 20 (W20) meeting. A Communique was adopted at the conference, prompting greater attention and commitment from G20 members to women’s economic empowerment. China is actively implementing the commitments announced by President Xi Jinping at the2015 Global Leaders’ Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. One good example is, in 2016, China invited around 10,000 women from the developing countries to attend training courses in China and provided vocational technical training to 20,000 women in their home countries.

China is ready to join hands with the international community and continue to work tirelessly to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment around the world.

Thank you.