Of course, as you know, China is a country that has a wonderfully rising economy. They're investing extensively in Canada. They've launched a man into space. You see the coastal cities of China and these are wonderfully modern cities.
The problem of poverty in China persists because the Chinese government, not being a democratic government, does not allocate national resources in a just way. Extremes of rich and poor are clearly not acceptable in the Canadian way. We don't believe in that.
So in terms of Canadian aid, considering the scale of China, there's no possibility of us being able to allocate dollars there to assist the Chinese people out of poverty. We might be able to engage in some suggestions as to improving agricultural productivity or other technical assistance, but we're not going to be able to solve the problem.
I think the solution really is to encourage the Chinese government to adopt principles of justice and to reallocate Chinese wealth, so that people who are living in conditions of grave poverty should be dealt with.
I would say, in defence of the Chinese government, they have improved in this area substantially. The number of people living in absolute poverty has decreased enormously since I lived in China in the 1970s, when it was rationing and the poverty was grinding and terrible, even relatively close to cities.