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By David Dieudonne
, Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON: In confiding World
Bank research services to a Chinese economist, president Robert
Zoellick has signaled to emerging-market countries his desire to see
their representation grow, without taking major risks.
Justin Lin Yifu, the founding
director of the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking
University, was appointed Monday the chief economist of the
multilateral development lender, succeeding Frenchman Francois
Bourguignon in May.
He will be the first economist of
a developing country to occupy the post, which has been held by such
luminaries as Stanley Fischer, Lawrence Summers and 2001 Nobel
laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz.
“In some ways this is a stroke
of genius on Bob Zoellick’s part,” said Dennis de Tray,
vice-president of the Center for Global Development, a think tank in
Washington.
“He’s got himself a good
economist who has an international reputation, who has solid
credentials in probably the most important emerging-market
economy,” de Tray said.
At the same time the Bank
president is sending “a clear signal to the middle-income
countries, that are one of Mr. Zoellick’s six priorities areas,
that he is serious about bringing them into the tent.”
Daniel Bradlow, a law professor
and director of the International Legal Studies Program at American
University in the US capital, agreed.
“It does suggest more openness
in Zoellick in having emerging markets occupy positions of influence
in the Bank,” Bradlow said.
More specifically, “it’s part
of the China charm offensive,” the law professor said, referring
to efforts by Zoellick, a former US trade representative, to
persuade China to contribute in a more coordinated fashion its aid
to the poorest countries.
China, considered a major rival
to the multilateral lenders, particularly in Africa, joined in
December a group of new contributor countries to the International
Development Association, the arm of the Bank that helps the poorest
countries.
However, the appointment of Lin,
though fraught with symbolism, is not exactly a first, Bradlow
observed.
It was the second time that
Zoellick, who took office in early July, has given a senior post to
a representative of the developing world, after the nomination of a
former Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as a managing
director in charge of the Africa, South Asia, and Europe and Central
Asia regions.
Lin is not the first Chinese to
be named to a position of senior responsibility at the Bank. Under
the presidency of James Wolfensohn, Shengman Zhang occupied
effectively the number-two post, Bradlow noted.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out that the World
Bank chief economist has no executive power.
“You saw what happened when
Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist and tried to move the Bank a
little bit in a different direction—they got rid of him,”
Weisbrot said, referring to Stiglitz’s tumultuous departure from
the Bank, before he won the Nobel Prize.
“It might mean that the
research agenda of the Bank becomes more attuned to the concerns of
emerging markets as opposed to the poorest countries,” he added.
But few shakeups appeared to be
expected. Despite his origins and his atypical career, Lin, who
earned a doctorate of economics at the University of Chicago, is a
pure product of the liberal ideology that dominates the World Bank
and its sister Bretton Woods institution, the International Monetary
Fund, Weisbrot said.
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