World Bank leaders, including then-Chief Executive Kristalina Georgieva who is now the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), applied “undue pressure” on staff to boost China’s standing in the bank’s “Doing Business 2018,” according to an investigation related on Sept. 16. The report (pdf), prepared by outside law firm WilmerHale at the request of the World Bank’s ethics committee, implicates Georgieva and then-World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and casts a spotlight on China’s influence at the institution. China’s ranking in the 2018 report, released in October 2017, should have been seven places lower, at 85th rather than remaining at 78th, the lender said in a review released in December 2020. The report found the country’s boosting appeared to be “the product of two distinct types of pressure applied by bank leadership on the Doing Business team.” It said Georgieva and a key adviser had pressured staff to “make specific changes …