China will continue to strengthen cooperation with World Bank: finance ministry

BEIJING, July 1 (Xinhua) -- China, as the world's largest developing country, will continue to strengthen cooperation with the World Bank in addressing global challenges and attach greater importance to knowledge cooperation, an official with the Ministry of Finance said Wednesday.

While promoting its domestic high-quality development, China will also support the vast number of developing countries in realizing common prosperity, the official said when responding to a query concerning China-related loan arrangements under the World Bank's new Country Partnership Framework for China.

Over the past 40-plus years, China and the World Bank have carried out fruitful cooperation and forged an all-round partnership, which has made positive contributions to China's reform and opening up as well as global poverty reduction and development endeavors, the official said.

"As China's overall national strength has improved substantially, the scale of the World Bank loans to China has been declining gradually in recent years. This is a natural outcome of changes in domestic demand and the transformation of cooperation between the two sides, and is in line with international practices of the evolution of cooperation between many member states and the World Bank," the official noted.