At the Front Line : Reflections on the Bank’s Work with China over Forty Years, 1980-2020
This volume contains written contributions from some of the key actors involved on both the Chinese and the World Bank sides in the past four decades of partnership. It is clear that the World Bank from the very beginning provided honest and eviden...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/643531627030598596/At-the-Front-Line-Reflections-on-the-Bank-s-Work-with-China-over-Forty-Years-1980-2020 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36015 |
| Summary: | This volume contains written
contributions from some of the key actors involved on both
the Chinese and the World Bank sides in the past four
decades of partnership. It is clear that the World Bank from
the very beginning provided honest and evidence-based advice
to China, but China was always in the driver’s seat in
structuring the relationship and in determining what to do
(and what not to do). Periodically, the World Bank engaged
in national policy debates, during the Bashan Boat
Conference, at Dalian, then with the China 2020 and China
2030 reports, and the subsequent series of flagships
produced jointly with the Development Research Center under
the State Council. For much of the time, however, World
Bank’s impact was at the local level through demonstration
projects and reform pilots that China studied, adapted, and
later scaled. Finally, an increasingly important theme of
the partnership in the last decade concerns World Bank’s
cooperation with China globally, through International
Development Association (IDA), South-South learning, and
ongoing discussions over good practices in international
development finance. As China’s global economic and
financial heft continues to grow, this theme is likely to
become increasingly important and require further adaptation
on both sides. The first part contains the contributions of
World Bank Country Directors in chronological order by
decade: Caio Koch-Weser, Edwin Lim for the 1980s; Javed
Burki, Pieter Bottelier, and Nick Hope for the 1990s; Yukon
Huang and David Dollar for the 2000s; and Klaus Rohland and
Bert Hofman for the 2010s. The second part contains the
contributions of the Chinese authors, which are organized by
themes. The third essay speaks to the shift in World Bank’s
program to support China’s climate action following the
Paris Agreement, with lessons that are highly relevant for
the future evolution of the partnership. The fourth
contribution is from Yang Yingming, former Executive
Director for China at the World Bank, and now back with the
Ministry of Finance, and reflects on the interaction between
World Bank’s knowledge and financial cooperation with China,
drawing lessons for other countries and for the future of
the partnership. |
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