by Our Foreign Desk

CHINESE President Xi Jinping pledged billions in aid at the weekend and said that Beijing will forgive debts due this year in an effort to help the world’s poorest nations.

He was the first world leader to put flesh on the bones of good intentions agreed at Friday’s UN global summit on Friday to help poor countries achieve sweeping new development goals.

The new development push is intended to eliminate both poverty and hunger over the next 15 years.

It replaces a soon-to-expire set of development goals whose limited success was largely due to China’s surge out of poverty over the past decade and a half.

Mr Xi vowed to help other countries make a similar transformation.

China would commit an initial $2 billion (£1.3bn) to establish an assistance fund to meet the post-2015 goals in areas such as education, healthcare and economic development.

The Chinese leader said that Beijing would seek to increase the fund to $12bn (£7.9bn) by 2030.

China would write off intergovernmental interest-free loans owed by the least-developed small island nations and most heavily debt-burdened countries due this year.

President Xi said that China “will continue to increase investment in the least-developed countries” and support global institutions, including the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The bank is to be launched by the end of the year and is seen as an alternative to the Western-dominated financial institutions of the World Bank.

He followed up his development summit pledge yesterday by announcing a $10 million (£6.6m) donation to the UN agency promoting women’s rights to implement the 1995 blueprint adopted by world leaders to achieve gender equality.

It remains a UN goal for 2030.

Mr Xi, who is cochairing a meeting to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the UN women’s conference in Beijing that adopted the blueprint, announced that, in the next five years, China would help developing countries establish 100 health projects for women and children.

He said that China would also finance 100 projects to send poor girls to school, train 30,000 women from developing countries in China and provide training opportunities for 100,000 women in other developing countries.