From the article:
The World Bank's mission is to lift countries out of extreme poverty. Few would say China fits that description these days. It's technically eligible for World Bank loans. But as NPR's Jason Beaubien reports, some people question whether China really needs the money.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: China has cash reserves of some $3 trillion, yet continues to borrow significant amounts of money each year from the World Bank. Under the bank's rules, once a nation's per capita income tops $7,000, they're supposed to get weaned off the World Bank's subsidized loans. China passed that threshold in 2016.
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BEAUBIEN: The World Bank has specific issues that it's trying to influence globally, and one of them is climate change.
SCOTT MORRIS: China's the world's largest polluter today, and the biggest single category of expenditures for the World Bank is in this area.
BEAUBIEN: That's Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the lead author of a new report on World Bank lending to China. He found that 38 percent of loans to China over the last three years were focused on what the bank calls global public goods, issues that extend beyond China's borders such as climate change, smokestack emissions and other industrial pollution. The fear is that if the World Bank disengages, China will scale back some of these environmental efforts. Morris says China recently has also turned to the bank for money for a wide range of projects involving education, agriculture and roads. It borrowed $200 million for a port and shipping container logistics park on the Yangtze River. There was even a loan to support heritage-based sustainable tourism.
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