ADB's partnership with China to focus on high-quality, green development

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Tuesday that it has generally endorsed a new country partnership strategy (CPS) for China for the 2021-2025 period to support government efforts to achieve high-quality, green development.

The ADB said its operations in China will focus on three interrelated strategic priorities -- environmentally sustainable development, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and an aging society and health security.

"ADB is targeting areas where it can add value through innovative demonstration projects that generate regional public goods, knowledge, and best practices for replication," ADB's Country Director for China Yolanda Fernandez Lommen said in a statement.

"Close cooperation between sovereign and non-sovereign operations will be at the core of this approach, and synergies between ADB's operational and knowledge departments will be used to help develop solutions to complex issues," she added.

The ADB proposes total lending commitments in the country of 7.0 billion U.S. dollars to 7.5 billion U.S. dollars for 2021-2025 for sovereign operations, compared with 9.0 billion U.S. dollars in 2016-2020, with an expected declining trend towards the end of the CPS.

The ADB said nonsovereign operations will remain stable at about 450 million U.S. dollars per year.

According to the bank, China's rapid growth has also given rise to new development challenges, including social inequality, environmental degradation and pollution, a rapidly aging society, and health security concerns.

The ADB said the CPS recognizes that these and other challenges need to be addressed by strengthened social and economic institutions and will guide ADB engagement with China to close the gaps in key institutions and steadily approach graduation from ADB's assistance.

According to the ADB, the CPS is aligned with key government development priorities under China's upcoming 14th five-year plan.

These include an emphasis on natural resource management to combat climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem damage, low-carbon development, social inclusion in the context of population aging, and regional health security, the ADB said.