The 8th International Symposium on Child Development Held in Beijing Prioritizing the development of children has contributed to the steady progress of Chinese modernization

China Times (www.chinatimes.net.cn) reporter Wen Mei reported from Beijing

In order to promote international exchanges of scientific research and practice in the field of child development, the China Development Research Foundation held the 8th International Symposium on Child Development in Beijing on December 16, 2023, with the theme of "Laying the Foundation for High-quality Population Development with Child Development". More than 300 experts and scholars from ministries, universities, international organizations, social organizations, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, South Africa and other countries attended the meeting.

The high-quality development of children is the foundation for the sustainable development of the country and society, and the key to the improvement of human capital. At the first meeting of the 20th Central Financial and Economic Commission held in May this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed that efforts must be made to improve the overall quality of the population and support Chinese-style modernization with high-quality population development.

Fang Jin, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Development Research Foundation, said in his opening speech that the overall quality of the mainland's population and the level of human resources have been greatly improved in recent years. The average number of years of schooling of the national population increased from 9.67 years in 2010 to 10.93 years in 2022, the gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education increased from 12.5% in 2000 to 50.6% in 2022, and the average number of years of schooling of the new labor force reached 14 years, which is a high level in the world. However, it is worth noting that there are still shortcomings in the development of human resources in the early childhood stage of the mainland, which are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, there is relatively little investment in early childhood education, especially between 0 and 3 years old, and second, there is a large difference in the development level of urban and rural children. In order to achieve high-quality population development, it is necessary to increase investment and make up for the shortcomings in the development of rural children.

China is a large developing country with a large population and hosts the world's largest basic education. In the keynote speech, Tian Zuyin, Director General of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, said that the Chinese government has taken a variety of measures around fairness and quality over the years, adhered to public welfare and inclusiveness, pragmatically promoted popularization, increased financial investment, strictly regulated supervision, improved the quality of education, and promoted the leapfrog development of preschool education. Although China's preschool education has made remarkable achievements in recent years, the contradiction of unbalanced and insufficient development is still relatively prominent, which is mainly reflected in the distribution of resources, teachers and management mechanisms. In the next step, the Chinese government will resolutely implement the requirements of General Secretary Xi Jinping to "promote the universal, inclusive, safe and high-quality development of preschool education", solidly promote the implementation of the "14th Five-Year Plan" preschool education development and improvement action plan and the new era of basic education expansion and quality improvement action plan, and strive to do a good job in urban and rural coordination, inclusive protection, quality improvement and implementation of the preschool education law.

Julia Molina, former Minister of Health of Chile and professor of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Santiago, first congratulated the Chinese Government on its great achievements in promoting the development of children's causes. She pointed out that in the past few decades, China has made significant progress in the cause of child development and has made important contributions to the cause of child development in the world. At present, the global child development field is facing new challenges and problems, and countries should pay more attention to early childhood development and explore relevant interventions and policies.

Early childhood development helps to comprehensively improve the quality of the population and provides excellent human capital for promoting high-quality economic and social development. Du Xixue, Inspector of the Department of Population and Family of the National Health Commission, said in his speech that childcare service is the basic project of life-cycle service management, and professional, standardized and scientific childcare services are conducive to promoting the healthy growth of children. Doing a good job in the early development of infants and young children in underdeveloped areas is an important strategic measure to fundamentally block the intergenerational transmission of poverty and narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and regions. The National Health Commission has always attached great importance to infant and child care services in rural areas. The selection of the first batch of national infant care service demonstration cities will take the development of rural infant care services as one of the selection criteria. In recent years, the National Health Commission has supported the China Development Research Foundation and other institutions to carry out pilot projects in underdeveloped rural areas such as Guizhou and Shaanxi to provide care services for infants and young children in the pilot rural areas. He believes that the discussion at this meeting will help explore an effective path to achieve high-quality development of children, promote the healthy growth and all-round development of children, and jointly strive to realize the realization of high-quality population development to support Chinese-style modernization.

In recent years, the mainland has vigorously promoted early childhood development, and basic public health services for children have become more equitable and accessible. Shen Haiping, deputy director of the Department of Maternal and Child Health of the National Health Commission, pointed out that the mainland's children's health work has achieved remarkable results, relevant policies and systems have been improved, and the children's health service network has become increasingly sound, balanced and inclusive. The nutritional status of children has been continuously improved, and common infectious diseases have been effectively controlled. In 2022, the national infant mortality rate dropped to 4.9 per thousand, and the under-five mortality rate dropped to 6.8 per thousand, both of which fell to the lowest level in history, ranking among the top middle- and high-income countries in the world. In the new stage of development, the mainland has given priority to the development of children, integrated the promotion of child development into all aspects of its policies, ensured the all-round and comprehensive improvement of children's growth and development, physiology and psychology, promoted the continuous improvement of children's health services from quantitative accumulation to qualitative improvement, and tapped into China's experience, so as to contribute to the building of a community of human health and the realization of the global sustainable development goals.

In 2022, 45 million children were underweight and 37 million were overweight, according to UNICEF Deputy Representative in China. Air pollution is also a major health threat, with 600,000 children under 5 years of age dying each year related to air pollution. In addition, more than 1 billion children around the world experience violence each year, and children with disabilities are at higher risk. In today's increasingly interconnected world, if children don't get off to a good start in life, the world will pay the price. Governments and the public, the private sector, international organizations, academics and local communities must therefore work together to advance early childhood development.

Zhang Yanhong, secretary general of the China Children and Teenagers' Fund, believes that the current environment for the development of children's undertakings in the mainland is constantly being optimized. The legal and policy system for the protection of children's rights and interests has been increasingly improved, and the revision and improvement of the Law on the Protection of Minors and the formulation and implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Family Education have guaranteed children's rights to survival, development, protection and participation from the source of the law. The promulgation and implementation of the new round of the Programme for the Development of Chinese Children has provided a strong policy guarantee to ensure that children's causes and economic and social development are planned, deployed and promoted together. The concept of child-first and child-friendly is becoming a broad consensus in society.

In the keynote speech, Wang Pei'an, deputy director of the Population, Resources and Environment Committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, former deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, and member of the party group, said that the high-quality development of early childhood is the starting point of high-quality population development, and is an important part of promoting the construction of a childbirth-friendly society and promoting the long-term balanced development of the population. Improving early childhood development policies will help raise fertility levels, improve the quality of the population, and enhance family development capabilities. At present, the high-quality development of early childhood in mainland China is facing many new challenges, such as the decrease in the size of children due to low fertility rate, the differences in investment in child rearing and education among different families, the significant differences between urban and rural areas in child development, and the prominent problem of early childhood development in rural areas. He proposed that early childhood development should be included in the special basic public services, increase financial investment in early childhood development, increase the supply of inclusive childcare services, optimize the maternity leave system, promote family development as a national strategy, improve the policy system to promote family development, and provide more venues for early childhood development in communities, units, institutions, enterprises, schools and other places.

At the meeting, Lu Mai, former vice chairman of the China Development Research Foundation, announced the project plan of "Sunshine Beginning: 100,000 Rural Infants and Young Children Guiding Action Plan for Household Parenting". This project is an extension of the successful implementation of the China Development Research Foundation's "Wisdom Education in China: Early Childhood Education Program in Mountain Villages". Since 2015, the Foundation's Early Development Program for children aged 6-36 months has been carried out mainly in underdeveloped rural areas of China, providing caregivers of infants and toddlers under the age of three with the right companionship methods and interventions through one-on-one home visits. On this basis, the "Sunshine Start" project plans to provide early care services for 100,000 rural infants and toddlers under the age of three. The project aims to promote scientific concepts, technologies and methods to promote infant and child care, enhance the scientific parenting knowledge and skills of infant and child caregivers, and improve the level of family education in rural areas. Improve early childhood development. Specific targets include more than 80% coverage of infant and toddler parenting risk screening in the project areas, more than 80% coverage of "one-to-one" services for infants and young children, and infant and toddler development level at or close to the level of urban children.

The agenda of this symposium focuses on the key topics of early childhood development, discusses the important link between child development and high-quality population development, and explores how to provide high-quality early development services for more disadvantaged rural children from the perspective of promoting social equity. The meeting presented the experiences of integrated ECD demonstration projects at home and abroad, and how countries can accelerate universal access to early childhood care and pre-primary education through national actions.

In addition, the meeting also discussed the progress of scientific research, national policies and national project cases in the areas of nutrition, health (especially mental health), protection, and integration of family and community education for child development, with a view to providing reference for strengthening international exchanges on child development and contributing to the better development of child development in mainland China.

The China Development Research Foundation has long been concerned about the development of children's nutrition, health and education in the underdeveloped areas of mainland China, and has provided scientific basis for national policy formulation through social experiments. At the same time, the Foundation organizes extensive international exchanges to strengthen the exchange of experience in research and practice in the field of children between countries. From 2010 to 2021, the China Development Research Foundation successfully held seven sessions of the International Symposium on Anti-Poverty and Child Development, which was attended by leaders such as Liu Yandong, former Vice Premier of the State Council, Chen Zhili, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Education, the National Health Commission and other ministries and commissions, representatives of important international organizations, experts and scholars, and achieved good policy and social impact.