China

中国已为全新碳时代做好准备

Also available in English

世行“市场准备伙伴合作计划”（PMR）的第五次大会本月初在华盛顿召开了内容丰富、成果丰硕的会议之后已经闭幕。本次大会，我有幸向PMR的参与国家成员阐述了中国市场准备最终方案（MRP）。MRP简言之，就是中国国家排放交易制度设计计划的最终方案。除了中国提交的方案外，智利、哥斯达黎加和墨西哥也在本次PMR大会上提交了它们的最终方案。

版本: English

作为拥有成百上千万个家庭和企事业单位使用和依赖能源的国家，如何满足能源供应肯定是中国要面对的巨大挑战。问题是中国如何能找到一种可持续的方式来满足市场对能源的需求？答案在于……

人们自然会想到一个流行词，那就是“可再生能源”。中国当然愿意顺应这一历史发展趋势在实现经济转型的同时保证能源供应和能源安全。中国的可再生能源近些年一直在快车道上高速发展，2011年，中国可再生能源发电量已达到总发电量的20%。

Noel Aspras in the Philippines says that "even the lowliest of farmers owns a cellphone now" because it has become a necessity. Watch the video below.

When I lost my mobile phone two years ago, I felt dismembered. After all, my cellphone was constantly by my side, serving as alarm clock, calendar, and default camera for those ‘Kodak’ moments you couldn’t let pass. It was also a nifty calculator that I turned to when splitting restaurant bills with friends.

After grieving the loss of my “finger” for two days, I pulled myself together and got a new, smarter phone that allowed for faster surfing on the web, audio recording and a host of other functions that, well, made me quickly forget the lost unit. A blessing in disguise, I told myself.

So when no less than a farmer from Pagsanjan in the Philippines’ Laguna province told me that mobile phones were “no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” and added that “even the lowliest of farmers riding on a carabao (water buffalo) owns one,” I couldn’t agree more.

Click image to view larger version.

In this digital age, it’s easy to forget that there is a staggering amount of physical goods moving across the globe. Most trade—80 percent by volume—moves through seaports. Trade in developing countries makes up a good chunk of the total, and is growing fast. Handshake, IFC’s quarterly journal on public-private partnerships (PPPs), reports trade in developing countries is growing at nearly 14 percent.

And a lot of this trade is happening in Asia. In its June 21, 2012 issue, the Economist reports that the center of gravity of cargo trade is shifting from Europe to Asia. So it should come as no surprise that Asia is leading investment in seaports. Handshake reports that from 2000-2011, the East Asia Pacific region accounted for nearly $14 billion—32 percent—of private investment in seaports, mainly from China. The Philippines and Singapore are also major Asian investors in seaport projects.

Much of this investment comes through PPPs. Does this really make a difference? I’d say it does. Private sector financing and expertise make seaports and shipping more efficient. This in turn benefits emerging markets, which are becoming more and more engaged in global trade.

Could seaport investments be a predictor of future trends in trade? If so, Asia will become even more of a trade hotspot than it is today.

For further information, read Issue #6 of Handshake: Air & Sea PPPs.

The devastation from the Sichuan earthquake was immense; the recovery, impressive.

Four years ago on May 12, 2008, the world was stunned by the news of an 8-magnitude massive earthquake that struck Wenchuan of Sichuan Province and affected, in total, ten provinces in Southwestern Ch

Available in 中文

Changes were made in the way village meetings were run so women would participate more.

Whenever and wherever the Bank supports a project, to “mainstream” gender is one of the goals. The idea is a fairly simple one. Right? Making sure that men and women benefit equally from the poverty reduction activities we support.

There are a number of tools we produce to help us achieve this—Gender Analysis, Regional Gender Action Plans, County Gender Action Plans, Gender Disaggregated Outcome Indicators, Gender Check-Lists, Strategies and Tool-Kits, etc. So looking at the amount of guidance we seem to need one might be forgiven for thinking this is an exceedingly complex task and for wondering whether in reality (i.e. after that board approval is done and the real work of implementation begins) all of the “gender mainstreaming language” doesn’t get a little lost in translation…

项目对村民会议的方式做出调整，让妇女更好的参与其中。

版本: English

无论何时何地，实现社会性别“主流化”都是世行支持的发展项目的目标之一。出发点非常简单––确保世行支持的扶贫活动让男女都能平等受益。

为了实现这一目标，我们开发了一系列的工具：社会性别分析、区域性别行动计划、国家性别行动计划、按性别分列的成果指标、社会性别检查清单、战略和工具包等等。如此看来，这确实是一项极其复杂的任务，难免让人怀疑 “性别主流化”的种种政策是否能在执行过程中不走样。

How China’s current account surplus will evolve in the coming years is one of the key questions on the economic outlook, both for China itself and for the global economy. China’s increasingly competitive manufacturing sector will continue to power ahead, to expand exports and to gain global market share. At the same time, China’s domestic economy should continue to grow rapidly, thereby drawing imports. However, how this will on balance play out with regard to the current account surplus is less certain. It will largely depend on how much progress is made with rebalancing the economy.

(Originally posted in English)

在过去的30年里，中国经济高速增长，创造了人类历史上空前的“发展奇迹”。自1978年实施改革开放政策以来，中国国内生产总值(GDP)保持了9%以上的年均增幅(见表1)。2010年，中国更是超过日本成为全球第二大经济体。

(Originally posted in English)

这是我在为撰写新一期《中国经济季报》重新审视中国近期经济发展、前景展望和政策寓意之后写的第一篇博文。在这篇概要之后，过几天我还会写一篇博文探讨关于相对价格的某些有趣的中期趋势以及外贸对中国经济的相对重要性（本期《季报》也讨论了这些问题）。

“正常化”这个词在最近讨论经济增长结构和宏观经济政策立场时大量出现，在中国也一样。但这是难以避免的。在2010年期间，中国的增长结果开始趋向“正常化”，这出现在2009年的投机风潮过后，大规模的政府主导的内需大幅增加抵消了出口的巨大收缩。2010年下半年，宏观经济政策立场也开始回归“正常化”。我猜我们许多人都用“正常化”这个词来形容或者建议采取一种与“正常化”的经济前景相一致的宏观政策立场，而不是采取一种特别紧缩的立场。