Mr. Kim's visit to China

This week World Bank president Jim Yong Kim is in China to meet with high-level Chinese officials, visit Bank projects, and also launch some new initiatives and collaborations. Here's a report of Mr. Kim's visit. The World Bank also posted a few pictures.

A snippet from the World Bank news flash:

BEIJING, November 27, 2012 – The World Bank Group and China today launched a new knowledge hub to improve development outcomes, aiming to spread practical knowledge from China’s successes in reducing poverty both within China as well as to other countries. Initially, the knowledge hub will help find environmentally friendly solutions to expand urban transport in China’s cities.

And if you are wondering why this focus on urban transport is important:

Managing urbanization is a priority for China, with about 75 percent of its gross domestic product generated in the largest 120 cities, and 350 million rural residents expected to move into its cities over the next 20 years. The Bank is helping China introduce transport improvements in about 30 cities, focusing on low-carbon emission options such as public transportation, walking and cycling.

The new knowledge hub will speed up the process of analyzing the successes and lessons learned in implementing solutions to urban challenges. [....] The knowledge hub will also help Chinese cities learn from each other. An integrated corridor management approach was introduced in an urban transport project in several cities in Liaoning Province to improve people’s travel speed, reliability, safety, and security in a comprehensive manner, based on successful examples in London and New York. It is now making public transport more attractive in other cities including Taiyuan, Wuhan, Changzhi, Xiangyang, and Xining.

Excerpts from China and World Bank Group Launch New Knowledge Hub to Provide Solutions for Reducing Poverty

Earthquake Readiness

Believe it or not, but in between all the fun trips and hikes, there's actual work going on here in China. The World Bank website recently posted a nice write-up of one of Paul's projects in Sichuan Province. The article is titled, China: Restoring and Improving Education in Earthquake-struck Areas, and gives a good overview of the need for some investments in this remote area. Here's an example paragraph:

"Damaging over 2,600 schools in the Longnan area, the earthquake four years ago set back an education infrastructure already in need of help. In the aftermath of the quake, a safety assessment rated more than 62% of Longnan’s school buildings as “in need of repair or worse”. The half million students and over 26,000 teachers had to make do with classes in prefab shelters or temporary camps."

For some pictures of Paul at work, check out these two earlier blogs posts about Three Years After the Wenchuan Earthquake and And What Do You Do Again?.

In het Nederlands: China: Restoring and Improving Education in Earthquake-struck Areas op de website van de Wereldbank is een kort artikel over een van Paul's projecten hier in China. Het vertelt over het gebied Longnan, in de provincie Sichuan, waar de Wenchuan aardbeving in mei 2008 bijzonder veel schade had aangericht. Inmiddels zijn veel scholen weer herbouwd--de gebouwen zijn mooier en beter dan ooit tevoren--en ook de leraren zijn beter voorbereid op een eventuele volgende aardbeving.