Development finance veteran urges multilateral response to Trump challenges

Zhu Xian, a former World Bank vice-president and a former deputy head of the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank (NDB), said China’s response will demand not only a strong domestic market but also engagement with all possible international stakeholders.

“It depends on whether Beijing can bring forward an agenda … that can be supported by other developing countries, new emerging economies or even some developed nations,” the development finance veteran said in an interview with the Post on Tuesday.

Zhu, who started his career at China’s Ministry of Finance in the 1980s, spent more than two decades in multilateral development finance. He is now executive vice-president of the International Finance Forum, a platform for strategic dialogue, exchanges and cooperation.

He said China “should play smart”, warning that an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth strategy risked creating a lose-lose situation in bilateral exchanges with the United States.