World Bank President Robert Zoellick will begin a five-day visit to China today to promote partnership, according to the bank.

Zoellick will attend a workshop with Chinese officials and other experts in Beijing to discuss preliminary research results for a report on China's key challenges in the years to 2030.

The report, prepared jointly by China's Ministry of Finance, the Development Research Center of the State Council and the World Bank, is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

Zoellick said: "I am looking forward to visiting China to listen and learn, and to discuss China's medium-term challenges as well as its response to the global economic crisis. In our increasingly multipolar world economy, China is an important pole of global growth and a growing source of ideas and innovation on how to overcome poverty."

Zoellick will meet state and provincial government leaders during his visit. He will also travel to China's northeast to visit a farm and rice processing facilities in Beidahuang area, a commodity grain production base and strategic grain reserve.

It will be Zoellick's fifth official visit to China since he became World Bank president in July 2007.