World Bank President Robert Zoellick was set to arrive in Beijing on Thursday to discuss China's economic prospects and possible lessons for other developing nations. "I am looking forward to visiting China to listen and learn, and to discuss China's medium-term challenges as well as its response to the global economic crisis," Zoellick said in a statement before his trip.
"In our increasingly multi-polar world economy, China is an important pole of global growth and a growing source of ideas and innovation on how to overcome poverty," he said. Zoellick was scheduled to attend a workshop with Chinese officials and international experts to discuss a joint report on China's "key medium-term challenges towards 2030," to be published later this year.
He also planned to discuss China's response to the global economic crisis, meet state and provincial leaders, and travel to a farm and rice-processing base in north-eastern China. China had produced a successful pattern of economic growth over the past decade, Zoellick said in an interview with state broadcaster China Central television on Wednesday. "But now Chinese policy makers are wondering whether the same mode is good for the next 10 years. This is an interesting question," he said.
Zeollick told the broadcaster that China's experience could provide guidance for other nations where growth was slowing. "We could get some experience about avoiding the middle-income trap, and recommend it to other developing nations," he said. "Many emerging markets face the same problem."
The "modest" global economic recovery remained "at some risk" and brought different challenges to developed and developing economies, Zoellick said in a separate interview with the official Xinhua news agency. "For many of the developing countries, the issue now is how to avoid overheating and inflationary risks, such as the one China is seeking to address," he said. Globally, the recovery was "moving into a more sensitive phase," with more focus needed on structural reforms in the United States, Europe and Japan, he said. Zoellick told the agency he remained concerned about some risks in the eurozone related to the problems of sovereign debt, weak banking, and the poor competitiveness of economies such as Portugal and Greece.