China still has a long way to go

Editor’s note: This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up, and huge changes have been made in Beijing, capital of China, over the past 40 years. We have invited 40 foreign experts to participate in a series of interviews named “New Era, New Insight” jointly hosted by GMW.cn（The official website of Guangming Daily） and the Information Office of Beijing Municipality and share their “Beijing Stories”.

My name is Bert Hofman.I have been living in China on and off for the last 20 years, working for the last 25 years.I’m the country director for the World Bank at the moment.And I have so largely spend my time in the World Bank in Asia about half the time in China the other half and in Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore.

GMW: When was your first visit to Beijing and China? What was Beijing and China like in your eyes? In your view, what are the biggest changes in Beijing and China compared to what was like on your first visit?

Hofman: The very first time was 1992, so that's 26 years ago.Beijing was a completely different place.The first time I coming to Beijing there was no airport road, and there were only two ring roads.But the biggest impression that, it was not the new airport, so we came to the new airport, now it was the old airport, so the old airport was just new, it was a copy of the airport from Tokyo basically.

We came to the then new airport but there was no airport road and I remember it took me almost two hours to get to town, because there was only a very narrow road was available.Beijing was dark.Now if you come into the city, it’s brighten and shiny with lights everywhere.

Beijing was dark at the time and traffic, frankly, was very difficult because already reforms and opening up had to have resulted in quite a bit of car ownership and but it was very difficult to get around.Lots of trucks on the road, lots of trucks with coal on the road,and that was my very first impression of China.1992 was a very important year in reforms.

GMW：You became interested in and began to study China in the early 1990s as a World Bank economist, served as the World Bank lead economist for China from 2004 to 2007, and are the World Bank country director for China since 2014. You have personally experienced and witnessed the different phases of China’s reform and opening up. Could you please share with us some of your experience. What impressed you the most in China’s reform process? What support and help has the World Bank provided to this process?

Hofman: It was one month after I came for the first time, Deng Xiaoping made his tour through the south, the famous tour through the south which reignited the reforms that had started in 1978.It was a very important time.It's basically led to the reforms of 1993, the third plenary of the fourteenth party congress to establish a socialist market economy.So it's a very important here that I started to work on China.In those days, frankly, reforms we're only at the beginning and per capita income of China was only about 1000 dollars, 18 of what it is now.

So Since that an enormous development has taken place as well.The reform started in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping’s very famous speech “seeking truth from facts, emancipate the mind and unit as one to face the future.”Between 1978 and 1992, reforms are still quite hazardous, but after 1992 I believe China had found its direction and reforms is ready sped up.

GMW：The Jing-Jin-Tang highway was the first World Bank-funded highway in China. What special significance did this highway have for China’s highway and transport sector development?

Hofman: This was very early days I think we started this preparation in 1978 for this project, then China barely had any highways.

At the time, I think the significance of this particular one was first was across provincial highway which by itself as quite exceptional, but second we help introduce new bidding methods and new management methods.

So this was the first highway that was bid out and by international competitive bidding, so it was international companies that competed for the building of this highway and tremendous cost reduction for China.Second we introduced a technique, which is now very common in China, of independent engineering supervision.

A third party supervision over the quality of the engineering in the highway that was built.That combination of international competitive bidding and there's independence supervision became the standard in China.And now of course there's a hundred and thirty thousand kilometers of highway and it's the largest highway network in the world.With since this was our first highway that we financed, we financed another six or seven projection highways afterwards,but by now China is so experience in building highways that the World Bank is no longer needed.

GMW:The World Bank has worked with Beijing Municipality on a series of projects since the 1980s. The Beijing Environment I and II was the largest World Bank supported environmental project. What role did this project play in promoting sustainable development of Beijing?

Hofman:If I recall my first time in Beijing, this was winter, and I do realize that people complain about pollution nowadays, even though it has majorly improved in the last couple of years but in those days pollution was really quite horrendous and especially because everybody was burning coal for their domestic heating and it was many many industrial outside and inside Beijing. That also use coal for their boilers so for basically for their industrial heat production and electricity production, and so the air quality was really really very poor, so the Beijing environment one, pay a lot of attention to that, they brought in natural gas as a hill into the city. They converted a lot of boilers into gasified borderless and that by itself, wrote a lot of reduction and pollutions.

The second, Beijing environment was actually even more important that started in 2000 and that was briefly before Beijing was actually awarded at the Beijing Olympics. And so that project the two things it further reduced air pollution, and second by means of energy efficiency, by means of bringing in alternative fuels for energy and by also relocating polluting industries. But seconded major they help in cleaning up water. At the time in 2000 only a quarter of Beijing's switch was cleaned up, and with this project.

After this project end with coarse the efforts of the Beijing municipality itself. By the end of it, almost ninety percent was clean up, so there was a major improvement in the waterways in Beijing.

Those two things together, if you want help build the green Olympics of 2008. Of course pollution issues hadn't stopped by then, and the authorities continue to work on it, but the pollution caused by Beijing proper, we're basically done after those two environmental project. Much of the pollution afterwards came from outside Beijing and that's the struggle now. The sky is very blue outside and very clean, it's a good very good day, of course not every day is good, but air pollution in the past four or five years ever since the war against air pollution was declared by premier LI KEQIANG has improved and the world bank has helped a little bit. The government has put tremendous represent it in tremendous funds into all kinds of measures including switching off of fuels for energy, including removing the remaining coal fired plants from Beijing, including what we call end of pipe measures, a filtering of lots of pollution at the factory at the factories and changing industrial processes to reduce pollution as well.

In addition measures on transport, matter fuels and better cars have reduced the pollution coming from transport and even better use of better agricultural techniques has helped reducing air pollution including better fertilizers and better capturing of animal wastes which has been an important contributor to pollution. So all of these measures, the World Bank has helped design some of those measures and we've worked with HEBEI province where most where a lot of the pollution is actually coming from, that HEBEI province to help improve their programs and finance part of it.

And second what we have done we worked with a commercial bank to finance a lot of the measures to help companies become more energy efficient and to help companies switch their few intake from heavy fuel from coal to gas and two other less polluting fuels and the overall program not just the world bank, the world bank invested about a billion dollars in those two programs, but overall the government has spent much much more.

Together the results are starting to show. it's not yet done. This is a battle that will take another ten years I believe, because it would take a long time to phase out some of the industrial plans that are currently polluting but before they become clean, but a lot has already been achieved and the number as they show are about twenty-five to thirty percent reduction in pollution compare to three four years ago, so definitely there are results.