01. Annual Reports & Independent Evaluations
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Publication
FY 2022 China Country Opinion Survey Report
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-07)The Country Opinion Survey in China assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in China perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in China on: (1) their views regarding the general environment in China; (2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in China; (3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in China; and (4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in China. -
Publication
The Quality of Growth: Fiscal Policies for Better Results
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008)The world faces unprecedented opportunities to reduce global poverty and improve human welfare. Strong global growth and better economic policies in recent years have substantially reduced poverty in many developing countries. However, with the recent financial turmoil in the United States and rising prices for food, oil, and other commodities, the world economy faces heightened risks and volatility. Policymakers around the world face the challenge of maintaining momentum in growth, as well as of improving the quality of growth. This concern over quality is reflected in the highly uneven reduction in poverty, rising inequality in numerous countries, and widening environmental degradation during the past decade, a period of unprecedented high economic growth in developing countries. Unless these issues are confronted, gains from growth are likely to be undermined and the pace of growth, itself, will not be sustained. Growth is clearly linked to reductions in poverty. But the strength of this relationship depends on the quality or nature of growth. Various studies show that some growth patterns systematically reduce poverty and inequality, but others do not. And some growth patterns lead to underinvestment in human capital, overexploitation of natural resources, and degradation of the environment, patterns inimical to the sustainability of growth. -
Publication
The Bank's Assistance to China's Energy Sector
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04-27)China is the second largest energy consumer in the world and the largest producer and consumer of coal. Owing to its large coal resources, it is and will remain in the foreseeable future largely energy self-sufficient, although crude oil imports have steadily increased since 1993. In just 17 years, China has become the Bank's largest borrower in the energy sector having received about 7 billion dollars in loans to date. The Bank has also carried out a substantial amount of analytical and advisory services. Despite the amount of lending to the energy sector, the sheer size of the sector in China has made the World Bank, at least in financial terms, a relatively marginal player. The Bank s assistance aimed at helping China's integration into the global economy. It focused on removing bottlenecks to the country's accelerating economic growth and on institutional development (emphasizing technology transfer and capacity building). After the major policy breakthroughs of the mid-1990s in the power sector, progress on sector reform has slowed and major policy issues in such critical subsectors as coal, oil, and gas have largely gone unattended. To address this, the Bank can choose to focus increasingly on peripheral subsectors such as renewables and energy efficiency where policy issues are less sensitive and government buy-in more likely. A more difficult path will be for the Bank to continue its sizeable financial support to the energy sector but frame it within a truly comprehensive dialogue on national energy policy issues. -
Publication
Evaluation of the World Bank's Contribution to Chinese Enterprise Reform
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04-27)It is widely recognized in Chinese policy-making circles that the World Bank made a significant contribution to the country s enterprise reform in the 1980s. A major contribution consisted of bringing eminent international scholars and policy-makers to China, and in sending leading Chinese scholars and policy-makers abroad. The World Bank's financial support for these activities had a significant impact on the development of ideas on enterprise reform, especially at the highly influential Chinese Economic System Reform Research Institute (CESRRI), under the state council. The contribution of the World Bank was given more concrete form in the shape of joint research (from 1983 to 1985) on state enterprise reform, between the World Bank and leading Chinese institutions, under the umbrella of the Economics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The World Bank has been involved in several industrial projects through its loan program. The main point of focus has been the fertilizer sector, but it has also been involved in projects in the machine tool, pharmaceuticals, and cement sectors. The World Bank has devoted increasing amounts of research resources in the China field to analyzing the role of private enterprise in the economy. -
Publication
The World Bank and China's Environment 1993-2003
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04-27)China's environmental degradation has developed over centuries, but record recent rates of economic growth have now widened environmental impacts and accelerated many adverse trends. China's urbanization and industrialization have produced rising material standards of living but have ever more costly environmental consequences. The period 1992-2001 coincided with a renewed Bank commitment to the environment, culminating in a new 2001 Bank environmental strategy. For the evaluation period there were four policies against which environmental performance can be judged: mainstreaming the environment; enforcing environmental safeguards; implementing a global agenda; and environmental stewardship. The environment and social sector development sector management unit (SMU) has a small professional staff and manages the few Bank-funded specialized environment projects. The Bank provided intellectual leadership and when economic sector work (ESW) was critical, the stakes were so high that the overall cost-effectiveness of ESW was assured. Rightly the Bank participated enthusiastically and shared knowledge with a pluralistic group of donors allied to Chinese research institutes and non-government organizations (NGOs). -
Publication
The World Bank's Assistance to China's Transport Sector
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04-27)China's economic development since the opening of its economy in the late 1970s has resulted in an eight percent average annual rate of economic growth. Key facets of this growth are rapidly increasing domestic and foreign trade as well as increasing personal mobility and consumption of energy. The deficiencies of the Chinese road and highway system have in particular created a bottleneck in China's economic development. The major objective of the China country assistance strategy (since the 1980s) was to alleviate infrastructure bottlenecks, in providing financial resources and promoting sector reforms in China. In 1997-98, the World Bank worked together with the Chinese government in completing a review of the transport sector and preparing an intermodal transport strategy. The strategy provides proposals for increasing competition and efficiency, identifies the changing patterns of demand for transport, and advances the analysis of investment needs of the sector and their financing.