The future of the World Bank, and the sub-plot of China's lending to African countries, is a hot topic in the development community. I wrote about this recently, going so far as to question whether the IMF and World Bank really need to be around any more – a bit provocative, yeah.

A good column, as usual, by Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post covers Robert Zoellick's job performance thus far as head of the World Bank and highlights where he wants to go with the bank. In expanding the bank's activities in support of globalization and free trade (remember that Zoellick is a former U.S. Trade Representative), Zoellick does not believe that having China working in parallel with the bank is inevitable:

Critics want the bank to disengage from China, arguing that a country with more than $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves has no need for World Bank loans. But Zoellick, who thought hard about how to make China a global stakeholder when he was No. 2 at the State Department, has chosen the opposite route. His goal is to integrate China more completely into the World Bank's operations. The bank can nudge China toward being a responsible global stakeholder by lending to Chinese projects that fight climate change. It can enlist China as a partner in addressing development challenges in Africa in ways that promote transparency and decent governance.

Sounds like a plan, and I'm sure that China will still be interested in talking to the WB on certain environmental projects. However, China has huge forex reserves and a lot of projects in Africa to fund as part of its international "Charm Offensive"; one wonders how Zoellick plans to engage China and convince them that working with an institution in D.C. led by a former Bush Administration official makes sense.