Beijing is one of the great cities of the world

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”. The following is a part of the interview with the country director for the World Bank, Bert Hofman.

I think Beijing is one of the great cities of the world.

I think it will only get better in the next decade so I'm for sure

The first time I coming to Beijing

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 1992 was a very important year in reforms

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.”

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. If I recall my first time in Beijing, this was winter,

and I do realize that people complained 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 there were many industrial sites 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 very poor,

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 government has put tremendous efforts and then 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, filtering lots of pollution at the factories and changing industrial processes to reduce pollution as well.

Together the results are starting to show, it's not yet done.

After China's entry into the WTO that growth even accelerated because China became such a competitive player in the international economy,

So for that, all of that requires for the reforms, all of that requires support for the international economic system to make sure that it stays open and it requires continued support of the government for productivity and innovation. That's still requires quite a bit of reforms going forward, China's had forty years of fantastic reforms of great results, but more needs to be done in the years ahead.

The air quality has improved

and for me personally in a normally three four years ago I went running always into the gym because that's where they had the air filters and the only places you could run. Now quite often I look out a window in the morning and if I see the mountains then I run outside.

And I'm more and more see the mountains so I'm more and more run outside. So you visibly see Beijing air quality improving.