Chinese Statistical Delegation Participated UNSC 2008

The 39th Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) was held at United Nations Headquarters, New York, from 26 to 29 February 2008. Over 125 countries represented by their national statistical offices and 38 international agencies participated in the 39th Session of the Commission and the side events. The Chinese Statistical Delegation headed by Mr. Xu Yifan, Deputy-Commissioner of NBS, participated the meeting. The representatives of the Delegation were Messrs. Du Weiqun, Director-General, Department of International Cooperation of NBS; Xian Zude, Director-General, Department of Statistical Design and Management of NBS; Leslie W K Tang, Assistant Commissioner, Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong SAR; Ms. Y W Ching, Acting Deputy-Directors, Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), Macao SAR; and H C Mak, Acting Director, Department of Demographic, Social and Employment Statistics (DEDSE), Macao SAR; and others.

Mr. Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, on behalf of the UN to address at the opening ceremony. Mr. Sha highly appraised the works have been done over the past six decades by UNSC, fully affirmed the long-term commitment to internationalization and standardization of statistical standards and methods. He pointed out that the United Nations Development Programme as an important component of the statistical work is playing an increasingly important role, but also facing many challenges.

The meeting elected Mr. Pali Lehohla, Statistician-General of Statistic South Africa as the Chair of the 39th Session of the UNSC. Of this meeting, a total of 14 topics for discussion, including labour statistics, education statistics, International Comparison Programme (ICP), national accounts, comprehensive economic statistics, tourism statistics, distributive trade statistics, industrial statistics, international merchandise trade statistics, statistics of human development, data collection and distribution of United Nations Statistics Division, open standards of metadata, regional statistical development of Africa, United Nations Millennium Development Indicators Monitoring, and so on. The meeting also discussed the 2008-2011 working plan of UNSC.

Mr. Xu Yifan represented Chinese Statistical Delegation expressed the views on the topics of ICP, tourism statistics, metadata open standards, and United Nations Millennium Development Indicators Monitoring. Mr. Xu exchanged views on China broadly participate in the international statistical services with Mr. Sha Zukang during the coffee break.

By the invitation of Ambassador Liu Zhenmin, China's permanent deputy representative to the United Nations, Mr. Xu Yifan made 2007 China's economic situation report to China's permanent delegation to the United Nations, and answered questions of the economic and social statistics to the participants.