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Chinese President Xi Jinping made an announcement on Saturday during his address to the UN Sustainable Development Summit that China would do its best to raise its investment in the least developed countries (LDCs) to $12 billion by 2030, Bloomberg reported.
In addition, China will exempt the debt of the outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries, the president said.
Initially, China will set up a $2 billion fund for an initiative involving 600 projects in African and Asian countries, Zhang Jun, director-general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s Department of International Economic Affairs, said in New York.
Analysts say that China is interested in becoming a global player on the world stage. In the past, Western countries have criticized China as being driven by self-interest rather than a desire to fight poverty in the world.
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