On April 29, the Launch of 2020 IMF World Economic Outlook and Macro-finance Salon (No. 149) hosted by the IMF Representative Office in China and IMI was held in the form of online video conference. Steven Alan Barnett, Senior Resident Representative of IMF China, delivered a keynote speech. Wei Benhua, former deputy administrator of SAFE and former IMF executive director for China, and Zhang Zhixiang, former director-general of international department of PBoC and former IMF executive director for China, made comments. The conference was presided over by Zhang Zhixiang. Barnett introduced three aspects in his keynote speech. The first part is about the global lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and he put forward three conclusions: the pandemic situation has made great changes in the world pattern; this crisis is unprecedented, and due to its time and uncertain intensity, the formulation of policies will be more difficult; the global economy is likely to experience the worst setback since the Great Depression. The second part is about the economic outlook of the Asia-Pacific region. After forecasting and warning the future economic development of Asia, Mr. Barnett focused on the current economic trend, possible risks and possible countermeasures of China, India and Japan. The third part introduces the work done by the IMF in this pandemic, including meeting the global financing needs through the rapid allocation mechanism, expanding the scope of CCRT tools, providing short-term liquidity tools to Member States, etc. In the discussion session, Mr. Wei Benhua focused on China's future economic outlook, and expressed support for the work of the IMF and recognition of relevant policy recommendations. He put forward three points: first, the negative interest rate policy will exert an uncertain impact on the world economy. Emerging markets and developing countries may experience risks such as devaluation of currencies, capital outflow and volatility in financial market, so the implementation of negative interest rate policy should be treated objectively and prudently; second, we are still optimistic about China’s future economic recovery and development. The transformation of China’s growth model that relies on domestic demand development has basically been realized. Fiscal and monetary policies are well coordinated and there is a huge space for stimulus. External economic conditions such as the RMB exchange rate and foreign trade have been stabilized and improved; third, Belt and Road Initiative will effectively drive China’s investment in the countries along the road and achieve bilateral economic benefits. Finally, he called on the international community to support IMF’s reform on share so as to better reflect the changes in the status of emerging economies in the global economy and give full play to the role of the global economic governance mechanism. In his comment, Mr. Zhang Zhixiang emphasized the necessity of unity and cooperation to overcome the difficulties, appreciated the IMF’s leadership and role in the crisis, and affirmed the important role of IMF’s different policy tools in solving key problems such as liquidity shortage, financial stability and sovereign debt burden of member countries. In terms of the future development of IMF, Zhang Zhixiang suggested that all countries should provide sufficient resources to the IMF in order to better cope with the potential recession risks, and advocated more support and confidence from the international community to the IMF to achieve the recovery and improvement of the world economy. Finally, in the Q&A session, Barnett made comments on the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on the economy, the de-globalization policies of some countries, and the mass borrowing of some governments. Wei Benhua and Zhang Zhixiang commented on issues such as China’s economic growth, capital outflow and RMB exchange rate.