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Abstract
China’s aid is frequently portrayed as a challenger to established Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) norms, but it is unclear when the distinct ‘Chinese-model’ of aid emerged and how it has evolved over time. Using new historical data on Chinese aid in Africa and the case of Ethiopia, we have three main findings. First, China developed a distinct model of mixing ODA-like aid and commercial forms of economic engagement only after the mid-1990s, reflecting institutional reforms for allocating and managing foreign official finance. Second, social sectors have played a much greater role in China’s aid programme than is commonly perceived. Finally, Chinese aid to productive sectors has changed substantially whereas in social sectors it is relatively consistent.
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank Ya Gao, Yuqing Liu, Jue Wang, Yanqi Wang and Yuqing Yang for their excellent research assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
Notes
1 Alden et al., “Africa: Where Africa Fits.“
2 Fielding, “China.“
3 Matthews et al., “Learning From China’s Aid.“
4 In using the terms ‘productive’ and ‘social’ we do not mean to imply that productive sectors are more necessary or important, and stress that the ‘social’ is a necessary foundation of the ‘productive’.
5 Bräutigam, “Aid ‘With Chinese Characteristics’“; Zimmermann and Smith, “More Actors, More Money,“ 727–8.
6 China and the OECD DAC do not have the same definition of ‘aid’ (see Bräutigam, “Aid ‘With Chinese Characteristics’“ for an overview), and there is debate over the appropriateness of the term ‘aid’ and its definition. In this article we examine all types of official financial flows, including flows that meet the DAC definition of aid, and those ‘Other Official Flows’ that do not.
7 Bräutigam, Chinese Aid; Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift; Bräutigam, Will Africa Feed China?
8 Shinn and Eisenman, China and Africa; Taylor, China’s New Role.
9 Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift; Bräutigam, Will Africa Feed China?; Power et al., China’s Resource Diplomacy; Rotberg, China into Africa; Shimomura and Ohashi, China’s Foreign Aid; Tan-Mullins et al., “Redefining ‘Aid.’“
10 Bartke, Economic Aid of PR China; Bräutigam, Chinese Aid; Armstrong, Revolutionary Diplomacy.
11 Bräutigam, “Aid ‘With Chinese Characteristics’“; Johnston and Rudyak, “China’s ‘Innovative and Pragmatic’ Aid“; Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development; Zimmermann and Smith, “More Actors, More Money.“
12 Chen et al., “China’s International Aid Policy,“ 15; Foster et al., Building Bridges.
13 Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development.
14 Bräutigam, Chinese Aid; Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift.
15 Bräutigam, Chinese Aid; Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift; Bräutigam, Will Africa Feed China?; Li, “Chinese Medical Cooperation“; Wang, “The Chinese View.“
16 State Council of the People’s Republic of China, White Paper (2011).
State Council of the People’s Republic of China, White Paper (2014).
17 The data set can be accessed at http://aiddata.org/china.
18 Dreher et al., “Aid, China, and Growth“; Dreher et al., “Apples and Dragon Fruits“; Dreher et al., “Aid on Demand“; Dreher and Fuchs, “Rogue Aid?“; Parks and Strange, “Investment Abroad“; Strange et al., “Tracking Underreported Financial Flows.“
19 Bartke, Economic Aid of PR China; Hawkins et al., China’s Development Finance.
20 Copper, China’s Foreign Aid and Investment Diplomacy, Volume I ; Copper, China’s Foreign Aid and Investment Diplomacy, Volume III.
21 Strange et al., “Tracking Underreported Financial Flows.“
22 This database can be accessed at http://www.pkulaw.cn/.
23 Our data collection from the People’s Daily online archives took place in 2017 using a previous version of the database website (http://10.55.50.51:957/web/index.htm accessed 20 November 2017). The most recent website of the People’s Daily online archives can be accessed at http://10.55.100.201:900/web/index.htm. Although the People’s Daily is Party-led, as it is a media organisation rather than a government department, we treat it as a non-official source.
24 Bartke, Economic Aid of PR China; Hawkins et al., China’s Development Finance.
25 We also recorded details of 58 other Chinese finance projects without Chinese state involvement (e.g. NGO aid). However, our focus is on Chinese official finance and these 58 projects are not within the scope of this analysis.
26 Zhao, “The China Model.“
27 Measuring by project numbers is likely to understate the importance of loans, as it is likely that the largest and most expensive projects were funded by loans. However, the data on interest rates indicate that early Chinese loans were generally interest free and therefore had a significant grant element.
28 These included Algeria, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia, although Tunisia’s project was later cancelled.
29 Tseng, “Republic of China.“
30 Bräutigam and Tang, “China’s Engagement.“
31 Ibid.
32 These were the Republic of Congo, Guinea, Somalia, Mali and Mauritania.
33 See Dong and Chapman, “Chinese Government Scholarship Program,“ for a detailed introduction.
34 Glosny, Meeting the Development Challenge, 13. Many agricultural projects such as state farms also followed a ‘turnkey’ approach.
35 Huang and Hu, “Zhongguo duiwai yuanzhu.“
36 “Bräutigam, “China’s Foreign Aid“; Dreher and Fuchs, “Rogue Aid?“
37 Li, “Chinese Medical Cooperation,“ 9.
38 Bartke, Economic Aid of PR China, 116.
39 See Monson, Africa’s Freedom Railway, for a detailed introduction to TAZARA.
40 Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift, 52.
41 Huang and Hu, “Zhongguo duiwai yuanzhu,“ 32; Watanabe, “Implementation System,“ 73.
42 Davies, China and the End of Poverty, 38; Power et al., China’s Resource Diplomacy, 50; Shimomura and Ohashi, China’s Foreign Aid.
43 There is a spike in Chinese aid in 1984, likely due to the unusually high number of Emergency Response projects (22), which reflect one-off exogenous recipient needs (e.g. natural disasters).
44 Bräutigam, Dragon’s Gift, 67; Davies, China and the End of Poverty, 37; Power et al., China’s Resource Diplomacy, 54.
45 Davies et al., How China Delivers, 20–1.
46 For a detailed discussion of the EXIM bank’s role see Corkin, “Redefining Foreign Policy Impulses.“
47 Davies, China and the End of Poverty, 45.
48 See project descriptions in AidData’s list of 2000–2014 Chinese aid for descriptions of contemporary Chinese medical teams.
49 See the 2002 “Agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Republic of Algeria on the amendment to the protocol on the dispatch of Chinese medical teams to Algeria“, available at Peking University’s PKU Law database: http://www.pkulaw.cn/.
50 Shen and Fan, “China’s Provincial Diplomacy,“ 23.
51 Dong and Chapman, “Chinese Government Scholarship Program.“
52 Bräutigam, “How Many Africans.“
53 Of course, there is diversity within the DAC in terms of aid motives and modalities. In particular, the DAC’s Asian members are distinguished by their focus on productive sectors, and by their emphasis on aid to other Asian countries (see Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development).
54 Of course, due to vast differences in GDP between China and DAC members, DAC aid was of a much greater magnitude than Chinese aid over this period.
55 Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development, 6–7.
56 DAC, “DAC High Level Communiqué,“ see Annex I.
57 Trump, “State of the Union.“
58 Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development.
59 Stallings and Kim, Promoting Development, 82, 97
60 Quadir, “Rising Donors.“
61 Ibid., 324–5.
62 Bartke, Economic Aid of PR China, 62.
63 Xinhua, “Spotlight.“
65 Interview with official in the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, Addis Ababa, September 2017.
66 Bräutigam and Tang, “African Shenzhen.”
67 Interview with Ethiopian Railway Corporation official, Addis Ababa, September 2017.
68 See AidData’s data set for more information on contemporary Chinese aid in Ethiopia.
69 Interview with Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation official, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, September 2017.
70 Interview with Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation official, Addis Ababa, September 2017.
71 Calculated based on data from the OECD statistics database (http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=3#).
72 Site visits to the Eastern Industrial Zone and Bole Lemi Industrial Park, Ethiopia, September 2017.
73 Interviews with various Ethiopian officials, Addis Ababa, September 2017.
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Pippa Morgan
Pippa Morgan is a PhD candidate in International Politics at Fudan University, Shanghai. Her research interests include China’s foreign policy and foreign economic relations, international political economy and Sino-Africa relations. Pippa is also the Assistant Editor of the Chinese Political Science Review and the Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Yu Zheng
Yu Zheng is a Professor of International Politics at Fudan University, Shanghai. He is the author of Governance and Foreign Investment in China, India, and Taiwan: Credibility, Flexibility, and International Business (University of Michigan Press). His publications have also appeared in journals such as Comparative Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Socio-Economic Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, and others.