A villager shows freshly harvested Hami melons at Guotang Village in Zaoqiang County, north China's Hebei Province, Oct. 24, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Xiaoguo)

China posted strong human development performance in 2018, a report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) showed.

China's Human Development Index (HDI) value stood at 0.758 for the year 2018, ranking 85 among 189 countries and regions, according to the Human Development Report 2019 released by UNDP on Monday.

The country's HDI value increased around 51.1 percent from the 0.501-reading of 1990, putting the country in the high human development category, said the report.

"China's development progress over the last three decades has been remarkable," said Beate Trankmann, resident representative of the UNDP in China, at a press conference to release the report, citing the country as the only one in the world to have moved from the low development group to the high development category since HDI was introduced in 1990.

Countries with an HDI value over 0.7 are categorized in the high development group and those with a value over 0.8 are put in the very high development category, noted Trankmann.

China had seen improvements in the main factors indicating human development from 1990 to 2018, with life expectancy up 7 years to 76 years, and expected years of schooling increasing 5.1 years to 13.9 years, said the report.

The report also stated the incomes of the bottom 40 percent grew 263 percent between 2000 and 2018 in China, contributing to the fast reduction of extreme poverty.

China takes a people-centered development approach, promoting coordination of economic, social and environmental development, Wang Dong, policy advisor and program director for SDG Localization with the UNDP China, told the press conference.

Wang also highlighted China's local cooperation of poverty reduction authorities with health, education and social insurance departments in poverty alleviation, which enhanced the country's human development.