Editor's note
The cultivation of global governance talents is one of the important strategic directions of the country in recent years, aiming to cultivate a group of outstanding talents who have insight into the operating principles of international organizations and have strong international communication skills. In recent years, our school has taken many steps to expand overseas resources, cultivate internship programs, and support curriculum construction to support more students who are interested in pursuing a career in international development. The series of interviews "Global Talents: World Bank Senior Experts Share International Careers" will demystify an outstanding international development institution through the sharing of more than a dozen experienced Chinese World Bank experts from their experiences in developing countries over the past two or three decades.
The interview will focus on two themes: 1) the complexity of the development process, the diversity of national and sectoral backgrounds, and why national contexts are critical to the choice of public policy and institutional design, how to find solutions that are appropriate for the country rather than blindly adopting the strategies of developed countries, 2) career growth in multicultural multinational institutions, and how to lead diverse teams and lead in leading leading international institutions to make a substantial difference to the development of the host country.
Interviewee profile
Zhou Yongmei is a professor at the School of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University. After graduation, he worked for the World Bank, where he insisted on researching and practicing institutional construction issues, and accumulated first-hand experience in international development. From 1999 to 2012, he served as a policy and institution-building adviser to senior government officials in African and South Asian countries. From 2012 to 2014, he served as Director of the World Bank's Interdisciplinary Solutions Group on Fragility, Conflict, and Violence, where he promoted reforms within the Bank to improve aid effectiveness to countries with fragile institutions. From 2015 to 2017, he served as co-director of the World Bank's flagship report, World Development Report 2017: Governance and Law. From 2017 to 2020, he was based in Jakarta as Deputy Director General for Jakarta and Timor-Leste, responsible for the World Bank's largest national project on economic, financial, and institution-building, achieving results in fiscal policy, public financial management, local governance, financial inclusion, and digital economy.
01
Study: Touching the wider world
1. Why did you choose International Finance at Chinese University as your undergraduate major and continue your PhD in Economics at Berkeley?
In 1988, when I was offered the opportunity to be admitted to the National People's Congress, I chose the most popular major in international finance at that time. But compared to now, the learning resources at that time were very limited, and there was only one Western economics class for 300 people in four years. We don't have much rigorous theory and modeling, and even econometrics is an elective course. Luckily, our class with the name "International" had 12 hours of foreign teachers every week – this was the small window into the world that we really had at that time.
After graduating from undergraduate, everyone wants to go abroad to continue their studies and see the wider world. I'm very interested in economics because it is able to explain human behavior in an empirical way. However, at that time, no one could write letters of recommendation, so few Chinese students went straight to top-tier schools. Good students generally go to a U.S. university in their twenties for a year, read well, have an American teacher willing to write a letter of recommendation, and then reapply. I was the same way, spending a year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then reapplying to Berkeley, California.
2. Why did you choose to join the World Bank, and what makes the World Bank special?
During my Ph.D., I paid special attention to corruption, an issue that was rarely mentioned in international development agencies at the time. It just so happened that when I passed away as an intern in 1997, President James Wolfensohn revolutionized the phrase "Corruption is cancer", which really defined corruption as a big problem that hinders the development of the country. I was also exploring the impact of corruption on economic development and how it could be governed, and my mentor, Pranab K. Bardhan, also studied corruption. Therefore, under various opportunities, this direction was chosen.
Corruption is a very secretive practice, which is difficult to study empirically, and there is a lack of data and effective measurement methods, only Daniel Kaufmann's group of the World Bank measured it from the perspective of three perspectives: enterprises, officials, and households, by asking individuals about their actual experiences. So I really wanted to join the World Bank, to have access to the data, and to study the deep institutional mechanisms that I was interested in, and how the institutions were designed and operated, that led to the problem of corruption? I had a degree but I didn't have the experience, so I decided to go to the developing world to understand the mechanisms behind it.
The most special thing about the World Bank is its multiculturalism: colleagues think differently, dress, speak different languages, and live in different ways. The political and cultural environment of our partners is unfamiliar, and we need to constantly learn and understand and build trust with the local people. This diverse environment has provided me with another opportunity to grow, not only to improve my professional skills, but also to improve my leadership skills, how to build trust with others, build a team, and work together.
In addition, there is a strong sense of meaning in the Bank's work. We have done many staff surveys, such as organizational restructuring and bureaucracy, which have caused everyone a headache, but in terms of the evaluation of the sense of value of work, we are always in the 90th percentile. The World Bank is a place where you can always learn, grow, and expand your horizons, and you can always move to another country to work, a freshness that is hard to experience in other jobs.
3. How did your university education help you in your work?
My experience at Berkeley really shaped me. On the one hand, doctoral education has given me the ability to think rigorously, for example, when designing a project, why does investing these resources lead to a series of changes to achieve the desired results and goals? The same is true from the perspective of my hiring, if there are two young people, one has no practical experience in PhD, but he has more rigorous thinking skills, and the other is a master's degree graduate with 3 years of relevant work experience. I prefer people with a PhD because I think thinking skills need to be developed in school.
Berkeley, on the other hand, is very international, liberal, and tolerant. This has had a profound impact on me and helped me quickly adapt to the diverse organizational culture in my work at the World Bank.
02
The World Bank: Embracing Diversity and Challenges
1. You have been working on institution-building in developing countries for a long time. What is the importance and specificity of your field of international development?
In previous theories of development, what factors were considered important for economic development? The answer may be infrastructure and human capital, but institutions were not the primary considerations in the past. But after my work, neo-institutionalist economics gradually became mainstream.
How can reform promote social progress and economic development? In the end, who comes first and who comes after economic development and system building? What I agree with is that the two are carried out simultaneously and affect each other.
This leads to other questions: why do some countries have poor institutions and can develop rapidly, and where should we make progress first to make economic development sustainable and faster? For example, Mushtaq Khan of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London has the greatest negative impact on the corruption of inclusive growth, which increases the total amount of resources allocated by the state after economic development. If growth is inclusive, a middle class will emerge, and they need responsive government, democracy, and so on. This direction is very interesting and has a lot of room for development, and young people can try to study it.
2. Why did you choose to work in Africa, South Asia, etc.?
My first year at the World Bank was spent staring at computers, using data collected by others to analyze the extent of corruption, and I still didn't understand the mechanisms behind it. When I applied for the second rotation (Global Rotations), I thought that I must go to the field, and Ghana became an opportunity for me. I have been very fond of Sanmao since I was a child, she is the eyes of our generation to see foreign countries, so I have always had feelings for West Africa, and I also want to meet a "Jose" (laughs)!
I worked in Africa for eight years before moving to South Asia. He spent four and a half years in South Asia living in New Delhi, the capital of India, where he was responsible for institutional reform projects in various Indian states, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and other places. In the Africa Department, my best friend was an Indian colleague who made me very curious about India. Indian society may seem chaotic, but it has a different kind of dynamism. My work in Africa was noticed by a boss who recruited me to the South Asia Department to work on the flagship project in Bangladesh and the decentralization and local government institutions in India. Later, Afghanistan needed manpower, and I often traveled to Kabul for business.
3. How do you adapt to the different cultural environments/lives of different countries and balance family and work?
I took my two-year-old daughter to Ghana, Africa, ignorant and fearless, and found that it was not so difficult. Although Ghana is very poor, I work in the capital and hire a nanny to help me take care of the children and do the housework, which is not particularly hard. My parents wrote me a long letter, saying that if you want to chase Sanmao, you can go by yourself, put the child in Beijing, and we will take care of it for you, but I must have the child grow up by my side.
There are two types of people in the World Bank, one is like me, who wants to run out of the world whenever they have the opportunity. I feel that being in the field is very direct to see the results, and I can build a close working relationship with the local people, understand the country in-depth, and achieve very rapid growth. I lived in Ghana for a year, which opened the door to Africa, and then worked in Africa for another 7 years. On the other hand, for a variety of reasons, family, are either more conservative, reluctant to take risks, or feel that the headquarters is very important, and do not expatriate for the rest of their lives.
It's easy to fit in in a completely unfamiliar country. You're backed by an organization, you have a role in the local area, and as long as you're relaxed and willing to make friends and explore new things, it's simple. When I returned to my own country, I had a "burden", and my former classmates, parents and relatives would have expectations for me, but in other countries, no one had any expectations for me. So after I went, I just kept learning and experiencing it every day, and I especially liked the feeling of being distracted.
When it comes to balancing family and work, my husband and I both work at the World Bank and are very busy and travel-intensive, so we coordinate our travel schedules to make sure that our children have parents by their side. Later, we chose to live in India so that the small family could spend more time together, because business trips in India are short, and we can see our families on weekends. The countries we chose to be based in, India and Indonesia, are the largest offices in the World Bank, with two or three hundred people. Because the team has a lot of big projects, we can both find suitable positions. Although some people think that our children have suffered with us, moved so many times, and gone to very poor places, in fact, this experience may be the best gift we can give her.
4. What is the most rewarding project in your time at the World Bank?
The four years in Sierra Leone were my highlights. I went there in 2003, just after 11 years of civil war. Although all living conditions in Sierra Leone are poor, and all indicators are lowest in the world, my job satisfaction is very high.
One of the most important aspects of post-war reconstruction is institution-building. They asked themselves, why has the conflict lasted for so many years? One of the reasons is the extreme concentration of power. In the '70s, Sierra Leone outlawed opposition parties and local governments, and all power was concentrated in the National People's Congress (APC) and the capital. In the following 20 years, power was centralized, corruption was rampant, the people did not trust the government, and civil servants had to go to the capital to "knock on the door" if they wanted to do something, so everyone was particularly dissatisfied with the central government.
At the time of my work, the new president was in his 70s. It was the local government that gave him a scholarship to go to school, so their generation felt that it was a "golden age" and wanted to return to the pre-1972 state when there was a local government and local government had power.
Although there is a consensus on the establishment of a sub-government, no one in power wants to give up power to others. After a long time, the local government has no power to do things, and the people will not trust and support it and do not pay taxes, and the local government will gradually have nothing to do with national governance. Therefore, we need to make this layer of government have the will to develop from the beginning, and establish a positive cycle: the local government provides public goods to the people, and the people recognize it, so they are willing to pay taxes, and the government has the resources to do more.
Our project design is very innovative. We fund and help the new local government to do something related to development and people's livelihood within 100 days, and they must announce it to the people before it is implemented. As a result, all 19 local governments in Sierra Leone had plans in place and completed them within 100 days.
This has doubled the confidence of local governments, and they have more confidence to play with the central government on the issue of decentralization. At that time, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health of the central government did not want to split powers. At the meeting, the ministers of the two ministries felt that the local government was incapable of delivering critical matters. Those local officials stood up and retorted: We have done so many things in 100 days. On the other hand, the central government is almost at the end of the semester, and many textbooks have not yet been delivered to local schools. Therefore, we have not only contributed to the results of development, but also stimulated the vitality of game, persuasion and concession among governments at all levels, which is actually political reform.
5. What is the most important difficulty you face in your work?
In India, the difficulties encountered were quite great, and the officials I had been dealing with were changed all the time, six times in three years, or one in six months on average! Therefore, it was difficult to have continuity in the work, and it was necessary to spend a lot of time repeatedly building consensus. Sometimes the point of view is different, and the previous term has already been negotiated, and the next term has changed hexagrams.
At that time, the chief minister of Bihar was Nitish Kumar, who emphasised the "state presence" and the need for each village government to have a building. However, from the perspective of our system construction, building a building is not a very binding factor. In the end, we gave in to each other - to build a building, but also to build a building that embodies the concept of governance.
Specifically, how to design the building so that people are willing to enter without feeling afraid. We hope to use "people-friendly" architecture to show that local governments are here to serve the people. The World Bank team hired an Indian architectural firm to investigate local architectural styles and commonly used building materials. In the end, the designer formulated four design plans, all of which reflected the open and people-friendly style, and we discussed with the six pilot counties for them to choose, and they were very excited. Soon after, the leadership of Bihar changed again, and our plan was rejected by him, who insisted on using the "cement matchbox building" designed by the state engineering department, which had no choice but to compromise.
6. What changes and growth have you felt during your tenure at the World Bank?
The most important thing for me to grow is to be able to thrive and feel confident in a diverse environment, which I have longed for and accustomed to, and this is what I am now teaching at South-South College.
The other is the growth of leadership. When I was a project manager in Sierra Leone, almost no one in the project team was in my department, and there were experts in my fifties and sixties, and I was a 33-year-old who had to be willing to work for me. The World Bank is a very flat organization, PhD is level F, and many people retire when they go to the next level G, and they are very good when they go up to H, and even less when they go up. There were leadership courses for each level, and there were free leadership coaches, and when I was working in Sierra Leone, there was a coach who was always with my team. Instead of telling me what to do, the coach would talk to me, give me cases and books to inspire me.
03
Message from Youth: Always desire and seek growth
1. Please give some advice to Chinese young people who are interested in employment in international organizations or engaged in international development.
The most important thing is professional competence. In the past, most of the World Bank's students studied economics, especially macroeconomics, but now they have a variety of professional backgrounds, including education economics, environmental economics, social protection, and engineering. When we interview, we definitely choose professional talents.
We also focus on leadership and collaboration. We want people who are motivated, strive for excellence, and know how to work as a team. The group assignments I designed in my class to force people from different backgrounds to work together are cultivating these skills, and everyone has complementary professional backgrounds to create better results than working alone, so everyone should take advantage of various opportunities to practice this ability.
2. What do you think about the current anxiety of many young people, and can you give us some advice?
China's continuous expansion into the world is a major trend, and now is an opportunity for young Chinese who are interested in showing their talents internationally. Before, we were not at the center of the world stage, and now you have more opportunities than we did then.
But now public opinion propaganda always portrays the outside as very chaotic, I think it is a very one-sided story, the truth is very complicated, every country has a place of chaos, but also a very interesting and beautiful place. Your life expectancy should be 100 years old, and you don't have to decide what you want to do in your life before the age of 30, you can boldly look outward, you can go to developed countries, good universities to study for a PhD, but you don't have to go to the richest countries, there are too many places that are not so developed, but they are also very rich.
In addition, if you go to other countries, you can not only study in other countries, but also go deep into the local society. For example, volunteering in an NGO and seeing how local governments and business committees operate. Not only can you gain professionally, but also have a deeper understanding of the country's system and the logic of social operation.
My daughter graduated from Princeton in 2020 with a graduation speech by Filipino journalist Maria Ressa. I especially agree with what she said, "How do we choose the next step in life?" Many young people come to me and ask me how to plan my life and how to choose among so many paths. I'll ask, "Are you learning and growing every day?" Don't plan your life too utilitarianly, devote yourself to learning and experiencing new things, keep outputting what you have learned, and make the best results wholeheartedly, as long as you accumulate slowly, opportunities will appear in front of you. I'm like that myself – I've never planned what I'm going to do in the next five years, but new opportunities always surprise you when you don't expect it.
Interview|Zhang Yunxin
Edited by Ma Annie
Source of this article: WeChat public account "Peking University and the World"