Dan Banik and Justin Yifu Lin discuss the role of Bretton Woods Institutions in promoting global development, China’s experience of achieving economic growth and eradicating extreme poverty, what worked and did not work in India, and the key conclusions from his book "Beating the Odds: Jump-Starting Developing Countries".
Justin Yifu Lin is the former Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is one of China’s leading economists and has worked extensively on the industrialization policies of rapidly developing countries. Justin is currently the Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. At the same university, he is also the Dean of the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development and Professor and Honorary Dean of the National School of Development.
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Host:
Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod
https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/
Banik It’s lovely to see you after so many years Justin, it has been a while since I met you last, welcome to the show.
Lin Thank you very much for the invitation, and me too, I have missed you, I have missed Oslo, and I am so delighted that in spite of the pandemic, with the modern technology we can talk almost like in person.
Banik Indeed. So, Justin, let’s begin with the World Bank, you were the Chief Economist there from 2008 to 2012 and I remember having several conversations with you during that period. If you move to the current period, there has been criticism about the Doing Business Report and the data manipulation, some people are calling for changes in the way in which the heads of the World Bank and the IMF are appointed. Going back to the time that you were Chief Economist Justin, what was it like then? What were your experiences of being such a senior person in the World Bank? Did you feel that it was a position that allowed you to undertake radical change and reform for global development?
Lin First, I think it is an honour for me to be their first Chief Economist and Senior Vice President from the working world. You know, the World Bank is a very prestigious, multilateral, development institution, and in the past, the Chief Economist has been a well-respected development economist from the developed world. I was the first one to be given the position from a developing country, so, certainly, it is an honour. Secondly, the World Bank and other Bretton Woods Institutions, I think that their missions are respectable, just like at the World Bank, when we enter the gate of the main building, there is the moto ‘World Free of Poverty’.
Banik That’s correct.
Lin Just like you and me and many other colleagues, that has been our dream, that has been something motivating us to work hard, a world free of poverty. I am very much impressed by my colleagues at the World Bank, I think they have the same dream, the same drive, to try to contribute to development in the low-income countries and help them to eradicate poverty, and many of them should have opportunities for other positions in the private sector or in universities and so on, or even in the government. Certainly, I think that the motivation is good, and all theintentions are there, but there is still such a long way to go before we really achieve this dream of a world free of poverty, and certainly, I hope I can make a contribution.
Banik So, how was that experience, Justin, to be a non-westerner holding the Chief Economist position? Did you feel you had to work extra hard, did you have to prove yourself even more? What was it like?
Lin I had proven myself as a good economist, otherwise I would not be offered that position So, I do not think it was for me to prove my capability, but certainly I liked to bring something to the debate, to the thinking, and to the program, because the goal is clear, to help developing countries to have dynamic economic growth so you can raise the income and you can help eliminate poverty. The mission is clear, but you look at the experience, look at the result, you see that they are still so far away from what we want to achieve, and the statistics show, after WWII, so many countries in the developing world gained political independence and started their modernisation drive with support from the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions. But we know that when I arrived at the World Bank in 2008, there were only two low-income economies ever to be able to reach high income status, one was South Korea, and the second one was Taiwan China, where I was born. Also, we know that in the 1960s there were 101 middle income economies in the world, but in the time frame I was chief economist, only thirteen of them were ever to graduateto high-income status. Among those thirteen, eight were European countries, surrounding western Europe, like Portugal, Spain, and Greece, their income gap with the advanced economies was small to begin with, or oil producing countries. The other five were, Japan, Korea, Twain, Hong Kong and Singapore, so that means, in spite of so much effort being put into the developing economies, and countries themselves, with the help of the World Bank and so on, the majority of the countries in the world have been trapped in low-income status or middle-income status. So, certainly we need to reflect, we need to rethink, our intention is there, and we work hard, but we cannot achieve the goal. So, I like to bring those kinds of rethinking based on my own experience and reflection to have a little bit of a debate, and hopefully be able to bring something new to the program at the World Bank.
Banik I was thinking about your book, Beating the Odds: Jump Starting Developing Countries that you wrote with Célestin Monga, and I think what you just said has a bit to do with that; in many ways a lot of countries that are experiencing rapid economic growth are doing it differently from the rich world, in terms of what is considered in mainstream economics as being important in terms of infrastructure and institutions. So, in this book, you, and Célestin Monga, you outline an agenda for beating the odds. Why don’t you share with our listeners, some of the main findings, Justin, from that book? What is it that countries should be doing to beat the odds? What can one learn from the east Asian example? From the Chinese example? In April of this year, China published, the State Council published, a very important White Paper announcing the eradication of extreme poverty, and we have discussed this, I have had numerous conversations with Chinese colleagues, and everybody of course wants to learn from the Chinese experience. But, if we could begin first by outlining some general perspectives on how countries, in your view, can beat the odds.
Lin I think the first one, we need to have the confidence, poverty is not a destiny, poverty is something that can be eliminated and every country has the opportunity to become prosperous, and confidence is very important. Otherwise, people will think poverty is a destiny and under that situation they would not be motivated enough to find a way to improve. I have the confidence because I personally experienced the change from an extremely poor situation to a dynamic prosperous situation. I mentioned, I was born in Taiwan in 1952 and it was post-war, post-colonial economy, extremely poor. When I was young, I can still remember how poor we were, I could never ask my mother whether we would have lunch or not, I went home and very often, I had to touch the stove, if it was warm that meant we had lunch to eat, if it was cold, that meant we didn’t have lunch. That was the situation in Taiwan when I was young. But, when I left Taiwan in 1979, Taiwan had been a newly industrialised and a very dynamic growing economy. I went to mainland China in 1979, again it was extremely poor, and the World Bank statistics show, in 1979-1978, the per capita GDP in mainland China was 156 US dollars, and you know, the sub-Saharan African country average was 490 US dollars. So, in mainland China,the average per capita GDP was less than one third, and certainly, I could see poverty almost everywhere. The dream of the people at the time was to have a bicycle, sewing machine and a watch, that was considered luxurious goods for almost everyone in mainland China at the time. But again, in spite of this humble starting point, and in the past 42 years, the mainland part of China completely transformed, and most likely, by the time of 2025, the GDP in China will cross the threshold of 14,535 US dollars, to be a high-income economy. You know, so far only 18% of the population in the world lives in high-income countries, and by the time of 2025, most likely, the percentage of people in high-income countries will have doubled, because the population in China is a little bit more than 18% of the world population. So, from when I was born and from when I was working, I had experienced this great transformation from a situation of being trapped in poverty for centuries. To have such dramatic changes in less than one generation, in my lifetime, I think that to change from poverty to prosperity is possible, we need to have the confidence, but certainly, we need to understand why most countries have been trapped in poverty, like Taiwan, China, mainland China, for centuries and we also need to understand, what are the things to make this change feasible?
Banik Whenever one talks about any successful development intervention the first example that I think about is of course, poverty reduction in China, that is something unprecedented, no other country has achieved that kind of lifting so many hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Whenever I have spoken to my friends in China, including Li Xiaoyun my good friend, scholar on poverty reduction, he of course, often cites the crucial role of agriculture, as most of my Chinese friends say, it is a step-by-step process. On the one hand of course, since 1978, which in a way corresponds to the time when you moved to mainland China, that’s when the process of halving poverty in the first seven years of the reform period started. You had agricultural growth that was healthy, and you had almost 90% of the population that was engaged in agriculture. I have also been told that another driving force, particularly since 1986, has been rural industries, and I know that you have been working on structural transformation etc, I would like to hear your views on this, and the role of town and village enterprises has been crucial. Then, one final driving force since 1995, is this massive influx of foreign direct investment, so that has, again, spurred this rapid economic growth. Those were the three very broad issues that I have learnt from my Chinese colleagues. Now, if you were to reflect on this Justin, what would you highlight? Would you agree with these three, sort of, step-by-step processes? Are there other things that took place?
Lin I think that on the surface you are right, you observe those kind of changes, but if you go to any low-income country, the majority of people are living on agriculture. So, agriculture is everywhere, and how can the agriculture in China be a basis for income growth? If you talk about rural industrialisation, every country knows industrialisation is important, but how can the industrialisation in China be a success, but in other countries the attempt to have industrialisation encounters all kinds of setbacks? Certainly, China also benefits a lot from foreign direct investment, but I do know, in other countries, the foreign direct investment very often destroys the economy and takes away the jobs from their own industries and so on. So, I think that yes, usually those kinds of changes, but there’s something behind that to tell the difference between success and values. I think that certainly, in terms of poverty eradication we know that for poor people the most important source of their income is their own labour force, and certainly, if they dependent on agriculture, land is also important, how to make the land produce something with higher value, how to make land produce something that can bring higher income to the people, that is important. Otherwise, if you only talk about the agriculture, other poor people, the majority of poor people, live on agriculture, and this brings me to something my mentor at Chicago University T. W. Schultz said, you need your modern technology to increase the productivity of agriculture. If you can bring in modern technology to agriculture, then the peasants can turn sons into gold, that’s one thing, certainly, technology is important, which is understandable. However, they will be good to the low-income part of the world, sometime farmers, they would not adopt modern technology, and pretty often it is that modern technology requires infrastructure irrigation, fertilisers, access to the markets and supported by credit, because you need to buy the modern import and so on. So, if you want to make the agricultural productivity improve, you need to have other conditions, to be working together with the modern technologies, otherwise modern technology alone will not work. You also need to provide incentives to the farmers and so on, and for that, we can see that starting from 1978, the change from the collective farming to household based farming, that improves the incentive, but at the same time, the agriculture infrastructure has been improving, like irrigation, new varieties, like the modern varieties, hybrid rice, hybrid corn, and those kind of seeds provided through the national research, agricultural research institutions and also, their improvement of their access to the market and so on. Those help to lift the farmer’s income, but we also know if a country stays in agriculture due to the low-income elasticities, farmers produce more, the upper price may drop, and farmers may not get more. So, on the one hand, it might be possible to rely on international markets to help, but most importantly, you need to have an industrialisation process to shift the farmers from cheap labour force in agriculture to non-agriculture. If you can have these kinds of changes, the labour force in agriculture will be reduced and that’s on the one hand, certainly, that will mitigate the agricultural output a little bit, but at the same time, the commercial demands for agricultural products will increase. Because once farmers become workers in manufacturing sectors, they do not work on agriculture, but they still need to eat, they still need to have food supply, and nobody increases the agricultural demand and that can maintain the agricultural prices, but at the same time, you know that the labour productivity in the manufacturing sectors in general is higher than the level of productivity in agricultural sectors, that’s one thing. Also, the potential to continuously improve the labour productivity in the manufacturing sector, the scope is much larger than in agriculture, because you can start from very labour-intensive industries to deliver more capital intensive and then technology intensive industries, and so, you have many ladders to climb, to continue to improve labour productivity through income. This also, is very important and so industrialisation should come in, but as I mentioned, in the past, many countries also want to have industrialisation as a way for modernisation, but they fail. To make industrialisation successful, the first one, you need to go to the sector of each of the countries, the countries that have competitive advantages, because only the sectors of those countries that have competitive advantages the factor costs of production can be competitive. But we know, not only the factor costs of production, and even to compete on the market is a total cost of the competition including transaction cost; transaction costs, very much depends on the infrastructure, and other institutions, so, you also need to improve the infrastructure and the institutions. But we know that enterprises cannot improve the infrastructure by themselves or institutions by themselves. So, in that regard, you need to develop your economy, according to your competitive advantages and with a facilitation state to help the enterprises to overcome market failures or bottlenecks in infrastructure and in institutions. In this process if foreign direct investment is in line to come to the sector which the country has competitive advantages, then it helps.
Banik You know, I think the concept of the facilitating state is really interesting in this context, and just in thinking about what Amartya Sen and others have often highlighted that, unlike what some people think, a lot of what has worked in China is not necessarily just because of rapid economic growth, in fact, there were certain investments that had taken place in the country that were aimed at promoting long term human development well before the country started experiencing growth. So, we’re talking about doctors and nurses in rural areas, education, all of this took place before 1978. So, in many ways the investments were there and when growth took place, the country could build on those initial investments. Which brings me to this idea of the facilitating state, Justin, and then I think you’re right, a lot of other countries are in the same situation, a lot of other countries are relying on agriculture, why is it that China did achieve this in a very different way from many others? Here, of course, some would say, it is the kind of stability that the party offers, the long-term vision, the absence of some of the challenges that typical democracies face in terms of shifts in government and the kind of short-term policy cycle that comes with changing government. So, what is your idea of the facilitating state and what is the role that the party has played, or the political system in China, how important has that been?
Lin I think that policy stability certainly is crucial. If this policy works, then you need to stick to the policy. Otherwise, you know, good policy will be replaced by bad policy, and very often, political stability can facilitate the policy stabilities. The most successful African country Mauritius, Mauritius is very successful; the per capita GDP in Mauritius is currently higher than the per capita GDP in China. But, in the 1960s, an economist was invited to do a country study about the prospects for the future growth of Mauritius, the diagnosis was, Mauritius has no hope; Mauritius did not have any conditions that are considered important for a successful country in 1960s, it was a tiny island economy far away from any major markets, it was an economy dominated by plantations, sugar plantations, and they also had import substitution strategies with all kinds of distortions. They have a democracy, a multiparty democracy, and the government changes from time to time, so, it was considered as a country without any hope. But now, the per capita GDP in Mauritius is exceeding 10,000 US dollars. So, yes, if you look into the east Asian economies, they tend to have political stability, and they are successful and sometimes people will say, a one-party political system is a precondition for success. But at the same time, we look into some other fabian state, they also had one party, and the party has been in power for ages, but they were not successful. So, from this kind of comparison, I think, to have a good policy is more important. What do I mean by good policy? In general, a policy which can help the economy to exploit their competitive advantages with government facilitation, and if you maintain economic stability in the transition, if you can do that, any economy can be successful. If this policy is successful, even if the government is replaced by another party, they also want to be successful, they will continue with these policies. Certainly, in the literature, we talk a lot about the policy stability, but very often those kinds of policy stability cannot be achieved, because the policy will not work. Because like in the book, Beating the Odds, you have X theories, and recommends all kinds of policies, and those kinds of policies have good intentions to remove the perceived bottleneck for growth. But the issue is that even if you implement those kinds of policy changes and eliminate the so-called bottlenecks, there’s no growth, there’s no jobs. Then a new government and the incumbent government changes, and the performance is poor, it cannot deliver and very often the government will be replaced. When the new government comes in, what’s the motivation for them to maintain those kinds of policies, which when implemented, do not work?
Banik Because you were saying earlier about how in China, it is not just the focus on agriculture, but the facilitating state creating incentives for the farmers. In a similar way, you could say that there has to be enough incentives also for political leaders to pursue good policy.
Lin That’s very true.
Banik Because sometimes, you have a government that comes to power, a party that comes to power, and may discontinue a policy that worked well because that is associated with a previous government. So, you want to create, your own legacy, put on your own stamp. So, I think the kind of incentives that are available for political parties and for leaders is important. I'm thinking about, the east Asian example, the success stories, and one of the things that always is interesting in the literature is the India China comparison. So, two countries that started development same time 47/48/49, and of course, the one defining characteristic is the political system. But there may be other issues and Martin Ravallion and others have been highlighting the fact that whereas China actually focused on rural areas, India’s strategy was a bit different, it pursued a bit of everything, industrialisation, agriculture, China had a one-sided sort of focus on agriculture before it industrialised. So, I wonder whether you could reflect a bit on the Indian experience.
Lin Coming to India, I like to come back to the issue of the legacy. Certainly, every politician, statesman, national leaders, once will have a legacy. They like to be remembered as a hero of their nation, but they also want to stay in power, and they are going to stay in power if they are number one, if they cannot stay in power, there’s no making of legacy, it’s impossible to have a legacy. How can you stay in power? You need to be supported, and how to be supported by the majority of people? You bring in jobs and prosperity and people will be supportive. Those kinds of policies can create jobs, can contribute to the dynamic economic growth, the leader that comes in will not change those kinds of policies, because if the new leaders change those kinds of policies, jobs will be reduced, growth will be slowing down, and then he will step down, and it’s impossible for him to stay in power, and he will not have a legacy. If you go to Mauritius, as I mentioned, they change government from time to time. But those kinds of policies can help them to have dynamic economic growth and those kinds of policies can help them to create exports. As I mentioned, Mauritius started with as tiny island economy with import substitution strategies, and at that time, there were no jobs for the majority of the people. But in 1971, they started to set up one export processing job and to attract the foreign direct investment from Hong Kong and then Taiwan to bring the textile and garment industries to Mauritius, and to utilise their abundant supply of, at that time, low wage workers, and also to create export earnings for the country, and that kind of policy works. Everyone knows that if you change that kind of policy, you’re not going to be supported by the people, you’ve had those kinds of good policies and demonstrated that the policy can really meet the demand of the people in terms of jobs, income, and continuous growth, those kinds of policies will not change. Essentially, coming to the comparison of China and India, I think that the comparison is very interesting, because in 1978, the per capita GDP in India was about 50% or 30%, higher than in China, because China’s GDP was 156 US dollars, and India 204, so, about one third higher than China. If you look into the literature in the 1980s-1990s, most people thought India will have a much better opportunity than China, because they have the so called institution which will be conducive to sustainable growth in a country, the so called constitution, democracy, free press and all those things. But now, the per capita GDP in India is only 20% of China’s. What makes the difference, I think, the first one, that we reflected on before we started our conversation, China certainly introduced the agricultural reform to improve the incentive, but India’s agriculture has been privatised farming to begin with, China brings household farming and pays the importance of incentive to field farmers, India has been there always, but how come India cannot have a very dynamic growth in agriculture? I think the government did not provide modern priorities, the government does not provide the extension of modern agriculture, the government does not improve irrigations, if you do not do that, certainly, the agriculture cannot be a driver of the growth, that’s one thing. Secondly, India did not work to make the transformation from an agrarian economy to a modern manufacturing economy possible. As I mentioned, it will only bring modernisation to agriculture, it will not make the country have dynamic growth. It’s very important in this process to bring the dynamic structural transformation from agricultural to manufacturing, and China did that, not only the rural township enterprises, China introduced the export process zones, the special economic zones that industrial parks to improve the infrastructure and a better environment for new investment from domestic sources to enter from foreign direct investment. All those kinds of sectors, in our working system, we cannot compare advantages, they are labour intensive, they can generate a large number of job opportunities, so they can attract the farmers to move from agricultural work to manufacturing work. Since they were consistent with China’s competitive advantages, and the improvement in infrastructure and so on, they became very competitive internationally. So, China turning into a force in the export, and if you look, the export growth in China has been much faster than the GDP growth. Now, China’s GDP growth in the past 42 years was 9.2%, but export growth has been 15% per year on average. All those changes are very important because as I mentioned, and you also mentioned at the beginning, the process of continually raising income is a process of continuous structural transformation in technology, and also in the transformation from agriculture to non-agriculture. In the process, a very important thing is to make these kinds of changes along the line of your competitive advantages, in a market economy without facilitation of state, and I think India did not do that, India did not bring modern technology to rural areas, and without making the condition of an application of modern technology, India also did not develop very labour-intensive manufacturing sectors. When I was at the World Bank, there was a debate about the path of modernisation, and on one path people pointed to India to rely on information technology, IT technology, service development, oriented development, the other one was manufacturing based development. For some time, people think that IT information services might be better than manufacturing. But I think that now, people recognise, if you look into the population size, India and China are about the same, China now 1.4 billion and India 1.39 billion, about the same size. But if you look into the jobs, China, in the manufacturing sector generates 125 million job, India’s information service generates 2 million jobs. Certainly, those 2 million jobs, their income is much higher than the manufacturing jobs in China, but only 2 million jobs. If you look at India, the total number in manufacturing jobs is only 10 million, less than one tenth, and I think that’s the difference. So, gradually, I think people understand, certainly, if you have good opportunities in information sectors you need to grab that opportunity, but do not neglect the importance of manufacturing, because that will be the main part of jobs for developing countries.
Banik Justin, a final set of issues that we can discuss is something that, of course, you’ve also been writing a lot about, as have many others, the impact of the pandemic and some of the worries all over the world in terms of all the success of development that was achieved, before the pandemic, many say, in many parts of the world, has been reversed. There are concerns about not just growth, but also the kind of investments that really are required in the health sector. Some people are talking about major investments at the global level, the provision of global public goods, and that we need to reform, rethink aid, aid as conventional, aid is not going to do in the future, again, things that you’ve written about. So, I’d like you to please reflect for our listeners a bit on the future of world development, the future of global development, some of the challenges you think China is facing, because there has been concern that growth is maybe tapering off in China, and of course, if China stagflates, then this could have serious repercussions all over the world. So, what are your thoughts in terms of both challenges and opportunities for development within China? And the kind of repercussions and the consequences this may have for other parts of the world, including the African continent?
Lin Well, that’s a big question.
Banik I always ask big questions. You know, that.
Lin That’s right too. I think that for the pandemic, that’s a lesson we need to learn; no matter how much progress we have met, we are fragile to unexpected challenges. The pandemic is a lesson, it is a precaution for maybe other bigger challenges, that climate change isn’t all, so, we need to be humble. Secondly, for the pandemic and other global challenges, it’s very important to have global cooperation, because no matter how well one country does, we cannot claim victory unless all the countries have been successful to mitigate risks like the pandemic. Because for example, with the pandemic the virus mutation is so fast, unless we can help all the countries to eliminate the pandemic, otherwise, we are still under the threat. But unfortunately, this time we see, when human beings are facing this global challenge, the spirit of global cooperation has been under challenge, most countries only look at their own people, within their own borders, and without giving support to the low-income countries and the people talk about apartheid, and about vaccinations. In your country, in western Europe, the advanced countries, the vaccination has been exceeding 60%, 70% or 80% of their population, but if you go to African countries, less than 5%, in some countries less than 1%. Without really helping African countries to really be fully vaccinated, we cannot claim the victory. Similarly, to climate change, we need to work together, we need to rely on and have the confidence, we need to have a mechanism to increase the confidence of cooperation. That’s one lesson we learnt, otherwise, the challenges will be there all the time and so, the pandemic is just one warning for us. Secondly, China was hit by the first, but China, luckily has very effective governance and so it has been under control in the first quarter of 2020. Basically, in terms of life, we can return to normal, but as I said, without the total victory in the world, China still needs to be precautious, and any precaution certainly has a cost, so, in terms of our exports, in terms of our import, and in terms of our production, and so on. But fundamentally, I think that China is in a better position because it’s under control and has basically returned to normal, and I do have confidence that we will continue to grow, although it may not be as fast as without the pandemic. But I think that China will be able to contribute about 30% to the global growth, like China did since 2008, and China continues to be a driver of growth in the world. I think, at this time, growth is very important for not only China, but for other countries, because without growth, it will be hard to generate jobs to meet the demand of young people.
Banik Will that growth be sustainable development, you know, given the concerns about the climate, do you think China will be impacted in terms of, going over, transitioning to renewable energy, shutting down coal plants, don’t you think that is all going to impact the kind of growth that China’s going to expect in the years ahead?
Lin Certainly. First, China is committed to green, to climate change, and China will peak its carbon emission by the time of 2030, and reach carbon neutral by the time of the 2060s. So, it’s a very ambitious progress for a country, still on the catching up on industrialisation process. But China is committed to do that, and the way is not to stop the growth, the way is to make growth green. How to make the growth green? You need to have new technology, green technology, wind power, solar power, and to some extent nuclear power, and to replace coal power. China, now, has been ambitious on the new technologies, but in the transition process, certainly, we need to pay some costs. Just like in the last two months, many provinces shut down their factories for a whole week in order to cap the energy consumption and to reduce emissions. With that, certainly, there are some costs on the growth. But yes, this is a challenge, but sometimes there are opportunities, because we understand that green would be the way to cope with the challenges and become a new area for our investment, in terms of technological innovation, investment, and the attraction of the green technology to replace the old technology is also an investment. So yes, it is a challenge but sometimes there are opportunities, and since China is a large country, once we have the breakthrough in the technologies, it weighs a large application domestically, we can make those kinds of technology very affordable, not only within China, but in the world. So, China now becomes a source of green technology, like solar panels, windmills and so on, and exports those kinds of technology to other countries. But, here certainly, we need to be concerned about low-income countries in Africa, and in other countries, and agree that we need to have this common and differentiated responsibilities, because climate change is a result of the accumulation of CO2, but most of the CO2 was emitted by the industrialised high income countries after the industrial revolution, so, it is a common challenge to humanity, but those which emit more, historically need to pay more. So, we need to agree, we need to honour the promise in the global forums to contribute the funds for the mitigation of climate change and adoption of green technology, and to support low-income countries to establish new technology. Otherwise, without a structural transformation, without a move from agriculture to manufacturing, they cannot generate jobs for their young people, they cannot raise the income for their own population, and without that, they cannot have political stabilities. But if they want to have this kind of industrialisation process, without green technology, then emission will increase, and it will be a contradiction to the need to cap the emissions, and the only way is to help them to adapt the new technology to have green industrialisation, but the costs need to be shared by the advanced countries and the developing countries. If we understand it as a true global challenge, we need to work together, to contribute, each one to do shares, I think we still have the opportunity, to cap the increase of the temperature within 2 degrees. Otherwise, either the low-income countries will be deprived of the opportunity for development, or we are going to face a risk much larger than COVID-19.
Banik Justin, it was so fun to see you again, thank you so much for coming on my show today.
Lin It was a great pleasure and certainly I hope to see you not only virtually, but also in person very soon.