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China’s new white paper on international development assistance provides a glimpse into its current thinking and approach to development assistance.
While China continues to be treated as a developing country by multilateral development agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the country has itself become a leading provider of foreign aid.
Yet it continues to view development assistance through a very different lens than that of established donor countries. In fact, China does not consider itself a donor at all, but rather a South-South cooperation development partner.
In practice, China’s development assistance is heavily intertwined with commercial and political aims, arguably more than in countries like Australia, Canada and Norway which have integrated their aid agencies with their foreign ministries. Witness the vaccine diplomacy practiced by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a visit to Southeast Asia in mid-January. While in Indonesia and the Philippines, Wang reiterated his country’s offer to supply the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine to the two archipelagic nations, which have struggled to contain the pandemic. Beijing hopes that acting the good neighbor will soften those countries’ opposition to its assertive maritime claims in the South China Sea.
