PEKING -- In a reference to U.S. concern over reports of forced abortions in China, senior leader Deng Xiaoping said today foreign critics of Peking's population program want China's 1 billion people to be 'poor forever.'
Deng's comments followed reports the United States might withdraw all financial support for the U.N. Fund for Population Activities because of the organization's ties to China's controversial family-planning program.
In talks with former Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, Deng said population control is 'in line with the country's vital interests,' China's official Xinhua News Agency said today.
Fukuda is president of the Japanese Parliamentarian Forum on International Population Problems.
Critics contend the policy has led to millions of forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as a resurgence of female infanticide by parents who want their allotted one child to be a boy.
'China is striving to hold its population to 1.2 billion by the end of the century,' Xinhua paraphrased Deng as saying.
'Certain people abroad who oppose China's family-planning policy are secretly hoping that China would stay poor forever. Birth control measures are helping China to develop more rapidly.'
U.N. fund officials said last week that the organization began scaling down its 40 projects in China in January because of the expected withdrawal of $35 million in U.S. support for 1986.
Washington, which contributes nearly 25 percent of the agency's $140 million budget, has complained that the agency's projects in China are contributing to the management of Peking's strict one-couple, one-child population policy.
The United States failed to pledge any money to the agency for 1986 during a November pledging conference.
Last year, in a move that outraged the Chinese government, Washington withheld $10 million of its annual contribution to the agency to protest the alleged coercive practices.
