Arguing with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during his meeting on Sept. 25 on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue of a “trust deficit” with developed countries, who have achieved their level of growth, appear to use the climate issue to keep the developing countries from improving the living standards of their people under the pretext of controlling carbon emissions, according to India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup, Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported Saturday.

Modi said that developing countries should be allowed to develop, and that the developed countries’ policy to impose restrictions and controls on development was not the way to go. “Positive measures like concessional financing of climate change projects and transfer of technology were needed to promote sustainable development instead of negative ones that focus on capping carbon emissions,” he said, IANS reports.

Addressing a special summit of the UN later on Sept. 25, Modi pointed out that countries such as China, India and Brazil are home to millions of people living in extreme ($1.25 a day) poverty—80 million, 280 million and 10 million respectively. It is not just about fulfilling the needs of the poor and upholding their dignity, nor about assuming moral responsibility for this, but realizing that the very goal of a sustainable future cannot be accomplished without addressing the problem of poverty, he said, the BRICS Post reported. Nearly 60% of India’s rural population qualify for “deprivation” estimated through the yardstick of seven socio-economic parameters, according to a new government survey earlier this year, wrote the Post.

Speaking at the UN Sustainable Development Summit and a South-South cooperation forum, both on Saturday, Xi Jinping announced more major Chinese development programs for the world, above and beyond the Silk Road projects, the AIIB, the BRICS Development Bank, the special development funds, and more, already put in operation earlier.

He began by pledging $2 billion as part of the pool of international funds to fight poverty in the poorest countries, as an “initial investment.” This raises the Chinese contribution to the UN fund to $12 billion over the next 15 years.

At the South-South forum, Xi said that China will launch 600 development projects in developing nations over the next five years, 100 each in agriculture, poverty reduction, trade, environmental protection, health care, and education. He said “cooperation and unity with the developing world remains the unshakeable foundation of China’s foreign relations.”

He said that these projects are based on the principle of “justice over interests.” (Ironically, and pathetically, the New York Times coverage emphasized that China has been a slacker on development aid!)

At the Sustainable Development Summit, Xi castigated the current coercive, politicized structure of aid designed by the West. He said China’s hope for the future was that all nations, all peoples would receive equitable assistance; that assistance “must not be just to certain countries and not to others”; and that the voices of the smaller and poorer countries must be heard “in the making of international rules.” The UN’s Millennium Goals program of the past 15 years, which the Sustainable Development Goals are intended to replace, were entirely coercive in nature — if a poor country was “good” and did everything it was told, it would get a few pennies.

Xi also announced the establishment in China of an International Development Knowledge Center to help developing countries.

He also announced debt relief for the poorest countries, and that China would provide 270,000 scholarships for students from the developing world to come to China for higher education or vocational education, while offering training for 500,000 more students in their home countries.