Michael Hermann, an international volunteer, has been engaged in poverty alleviation work in China for 20 years.
“I have never had the idea of leaving.” Michael Hermann, from Dortmund, Germany, known as the “Foolish Old Man” in China, said he would stay in China for 50 years.
At the age of 18, Hermann devoted himself to international volunteer service and has traveled to over 40 countries. Until 2005, he stopped his journey and settled down in China.
In his view, China has always been a vibrant, people-oriented, open and inclusive country, where people make history every day. He firmly believed that China is the most suitable place for him to realize his life value.
In the past 20 years, the man has visited many places in Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces, carrying out poverty alleviation and charity work. His work covers rural development, rural preschool education, AIDS prevention and control and other fields.
China’s Achievements in Poverty Reduction
Hermann has witnessed the great changes in China. He highly praised China’s achievements in poverty reduction. “China has successfully won the battle against poverty, achieved the poverty reduction target of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ten years ahead of schedule… No country has developed as rapidly as China globally,” he said.
Changes in Yunnan impressed Hermann the most. He said that the highway mileage was only about 1400 km in Yunnan in 2005, but now it has exceeded 10000 km.
“Looking back from 2011 to 2012, when I visited rural areas in Yunnan, the roads had always been muddy during the rainy days, and we had to repair the roads while driving. But such scenes are rarely seen now,” Hermann said.
According to Hermann, China has not only achieved a reduction in the total number of poor people, but also established long-term mechanism of preventing return-to-poverty. Even in developed countries, there are still a considerable number of people living in poverty according to their respective poverty standards.
For instance, the poverty rate in Germany is approximately 15%, and that in the United States is about 11%, despite the per capita GDP of these countries is several times that of China. This reflects China’s institutional advantages in the field of people’s livelihood, Hermann said.
When it comes to the future, Hermann hopes he can leave a small “charitable mark” in China. “Let people know, there is a German international volunteer who is been working hard here all along,” he said.
Written by Sha Liu, additional reporting from CNS.
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