China's undernourishment has dropped sharply over the past 20 years, a United Nations official announced on Wednesday.
"We highly appreciate China's contribution to the overall improvement in nutrition, both globally and regionally," Hiroyuki Konuma, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) assistant director-general and regional representative for Asia and the Pacific told Xinhua News Agency.
The official, who was speaking on the sidelines of the briefing on the second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), also relayed news of China's plans to further combat the problem with hunger.
"The Chinese government has already indicated its intention to move towards zero hunger," Konuma said.
Konuma also beseeched China to share with other countries its successful agriculture technologies such as the hybrid-rice technology.
"China has a lot of experience in agriculture. We are very much looking forward to China helping and working closely with other nations," the official said.
The ICN2 is being organized by the FAO and the World Health Organization and will be held in Rome, Italy, from Nov. 19 to 21. It will gather key government officials and stakeholders who will conceive new policies aimed at improving diets and raising nutrition levels which will be more attuned to the current major nutrition challenges worldwide.
In FAO's concept note, dated March 1, 2013, on the ICN2, it was mentioned that the "overall progress in reducing hunger and malnutrition has been unacceptably slow" despite developments in many countries.
FAO's estimates show that about 868 million people, or 12.5 percent of the global population, were undernourished in the period between 2010 and 2012.