Ms. HE Dan, Director-General of CPDRC, attended and addressed the opening ceremony. Ms. HE Dan stressed the willingness of CPDRC to build a research, insight exchange and communication platform for population and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, thereby providing strong intellectual support for government decisions. China Population and Development Studies (CPDS), China's only English journal on demography run by CPDRC, will also commit itself to introducing China's research results to the international community. Opening remarks were delivered respectively by Prof. ZHAI Zhenwu, President of the China Population Association and Director of the Population Development Studies Center of Renmin University of China, and Ms. HAN Jia, Greater China Publishing Manager for Humanities and Social Sciences Journals of Springer Nature, the co-publisher of CPDS.
Focusing on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the participating experts elaborated on China's headway in the sphere of population and sustainable development and the challenges ahead from the following six dimensions: population dynamics, demographic data & indicators, health, gender equality, population migration, and population and resources & environment.
Experts pointed out the close bond between population and sustainable development, and emphasized the urgency of maximizing the role played by population dynamics in propelling sustainable development, adding that it's imperative to push for strategies and actions to actively respond to population ageing by way of concept breakthrough, progressive evolution and system restructuring.
Focusing on the progress and challenges associated with the maternal and child health targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the experts expounded on the changes in contraception and abortion status in China in recent years, analyzed and summarized the achievements scored by China in the field of education from a gender perspective, and elucidated the changing trends of SRB in China and the world. The experts also recapped the new characteristics of China's urbanization and population migration, highlighted the implications of migration experience and personal characteristics for the in-situ urbanization of returning migrants based on the survey findings in seven Chinese provinces, and introduced the findings of the research on the relationship between population, resources and environment.
With CPDS serving an important platform for disseminating the important findings of Chinese population research to the international community, GUO Weiming, Director of CPDS Editorial Board, emphatically introduced the progress made by the journal, adding that CPDS, as China's only English journal on demography and the official journal of China Population Association, will stay true to its mission and contribute to the international exchange and dissemination of Chinese population research.
To wrap up the Seminar, Mr. LIU Hongyan, Deputy Director-General of CPDRC, thanked the attendees for their presence and said that China, as the most populous developing country in the world, has scored remarkable achievements in its drive to attain population-related targets set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, though it's also faced with a string of daunting challenges. He added that the population research must be strengthened in the forthcoming years to maximize the pivotal role of population dynamics in supporting socioeconomic development and to forge a new population and development paradigm featuring long-lasting balanced development of population and its coordinated development with economy, society, resources and environment, thereby shoring up China's early realization of the targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
