Vice Minister Wang Pei’an met with Dr. Nguyen Ba Thuy, Vietnam Vice Health Minister.
Vice Minister Wang Pei’an had talks with the Vietnamese delegation.
On 29 May 2009, Mr. Wang Pei’an, Vice Minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) met with Dr. Nguyen Ba Thuy, Vietnam Vice Health Minister and members of his delegation.
Vice Minister Wang first, on behalf of NPFPC, expressed his warm welcome to the delegation of senior officials headed by Vice Minister Nguyen Ba Thuy. He said that China and Vietnam were friendly neighboring countries and had carried out extensive exchanges and cooperation in the population field for many years, which had promoted the common progress in population undertakings of the two countries. He hoped that such exchanges and cooperation could be further consolidated and developed.
Vice Minister Wang introduced to the guests the efforts China had made in comprehensively addressing population issues. He said it included coordination of the relationship between various elements of human itself and that between population and other related elements. The Vietnam delegation asked some questions regarding the 2020 plan for China’s population development, services and management for the floating population, the unbalanced sex ratio at birth and so on. Vice Minister Wang answered these questions one by one. He said emergence of floating population in large quantity had already become an important social phenomenon appeared along with industrialization and urbanization. Currently, there were about 200 million of migrating people in China and in the next 30 years this number would increase to 500 million. The Regulation on Family Planning Work for the Floating Population just issued not long ago had offered guidance for better provision of family planning services and management for the floating population in the future. He went on to say that continuous unbalanced sex ratio at birth for a long period of time was an important population problem confronting China in the new period of time and realization of balanced sex ratio at birth through promotion was one of the goals for population development by 2020. Currently, China was dealing with the unbalanced sex ratio at birth mainly through integrated measures such as publicity and education, benefit-oriented guidance and handling of “two illegal acts” (i.e., illegal fetal sex identification and sex-selective abortion without medical grounds).
Vice Minister Nguyen Ba Thuy introduced the population and family planning situation in Vietnam during recent years. He said that Vietnam faced similar challenges in the population field as China. Along with the socioeconomic development in Vietnam, issues such as quality of life of the population, population structure and population migration increasingly became the major issues of Vietnam’s population. Since 2004, sex ratio at birth in Vietnam had been continuously increasing, which had aroused the high attention of the government. Ministry of Health of Vietnam wished to continuously strengthen exchanges and cooperation with NPFPC in the field of population and family planning, proposed to renew the memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the population field mutually signed in 1996, and invited NPFPC leaders to lead delegations to visit Vietnam again at an appropriate time. At the same time, to strengthen Vietnam’s south-south cooperation in the population field, Vietnam wished to join Partners in Population and Development at an early date.
Vice Minister Wang Pei’an said that it was the common desire of the two countries to strengthen the exchanges and cooperation between China and Vietnam in the population field. NPFPC was very willing to renew the memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the population field with Vietnam’s Ministry of Health and would send a high-level delegation to visit Vietnam at an appropriate time. China supported Vietnam to join Partners in Population and Development at an early date and was willing to introduce Vietnam to this organization.
Vice Minister Wang also introduced to the guests about the preparation work for the 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights to be held in Beijing during 18 to 20 October 2009 and the 14th Annual Meeting of Partners in Population and Development and welcomed Vietnam’s Ministry of Health to send delegation to the conference. Vice Minister Nguyen Ba Thuy thanked Vice Minister Wang for his introduction and said that Vietnam would send high-level delegation to Beijing at that time.
During their stay in China, the Vietnam delegation will also pay visits to National Committee on Aging and other organizations, and conduct field visits on population and family planning work in Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong.
