Can we do for our children what French President Jacques Chirac has suggested be done for the world's poor? Chirac called an international conference last week to push for a tax on air tickets to raise funds for poor countries.
France will start collecting one euro (US$1.12) for economy class and up to 10 euros for business and first class passengers on domestic and European flights from July. Eleven of the 95 countries that attended the Paris meeting have agreed to follow suit.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has hailed the idea as an innovative source of financing "to help the world achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)." In 2000, all 191 UN member states, including China, pledged to meet eight MDGs, from halving extreme poverty to providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.
China, the world's largest developing nation, was absent at the Paris conference but it certainly could help the world and itself meet the goals by levying a tax on air tickets to raise funds for the country's poor, especially its deprived children.
Given the international line of poverty of one US dollar a day, the UN Development Assistance Framework for China (2006-10) says the number of the poor in China is estimated to have dropped sharply from about 490 million (49 per cent of its population) in 1990 to 88 million (6.9 per cent) by 2002. But millions of children are still part of those in the grip of poverty and misfortune. And that has remained a cause for concern for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICFF).
Former UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy acknowledged China's achievements in the improvement of its children's well-being, but she still saw great challenges ahead in meeting the millennium goals, six of which can be best fulfilled only when the rights of children to health, education, protection and equality have been secured.
The importance of China's success in rising to those challenges can be gauged from Bellamy's words: "If China achieves, the world achieves."
Her observation hits the nail on the head because China is home to 360 million children, or one-sixth of the world's total. Among them, 573,000 are orphans, including 76,000 orphaned by AIDS, according to Vice-Minister of Civil Affairs Li Liguo.
But there's more. China has over 9 million children with disabilities, 150,000 live and work on the streets and 18 million rural children drift to cities with their families in search of jobs.
Despite China's rapid economic and social development, many of the marginalized children are denied or do not have full access to essential services and protection primarily because of a dearth of funds.
A clear manifestation of the country's booming economy, China's aviation industry handled a record 138 million passengers last year. If a surcharge of 10 yuan (US$1.20) were to be levied on each ticket, it could have fetched 1.38 billion yuan (US$170 million) in additional funds for children in critical need of food, clothing, health and education.
Health and education have proved to be the most effective means of breaking the cycle of poverty.
One of the many goals of the government's taxation policy is to use the funds collected to address inequalities in the distribution of income.
If the air ticket tax could somehow contribute towards giving every child in China a better start in life, it would serve its purpose. After all, the material wealth we earn comes from society. And the true wealth of a country is its children.
If we could change the lives of hundreds of thousands of children by just contributing a minuscule fraction of our material wealth, there could be no better way of paying back society and China helping the world by helping itself.
Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 03/17/2006 page4)
