The World Bank's president, Paul Wolfowitz, will meet Chinese farmers and see some of the bank's poverty alleviation projects during his October 12-18 visit, according to today's China Daily.

He will start in the rural areas of Gansu, a less developed province in northwest China, where he will visit programs for tuberculosis control, basic education improvement and environmental protection.

He will then attend the annual meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Xianghe, a town near Beijing, from October 15 to 16.

After the conference, he will visit some projects financed by the bank and other development agencies in Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing.

Wolfowitz will also meet senior Chinese officials as well as resident officials of UN agencies and other development organizations.

Though this will be his first visit to the country since taking office in June, he first visited in 1983 as assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs under the administration of US President Ronald Reagan.

His most recent visit was in 2000, in his last year as professor and dean of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. In 2001, he became US deputy secretary of defense.

(China Daily October 10, 2005)