Japan - Asean: Evolution of Official Development Assistance

The Japanese official development assistance (ODA) is a phenomenon of contemporary economic history. According to official data, 189 sovereign countries and dependent territories at one time or another were among the beneficiaries of Japan’s low-interest loans and grants since the country’s accession to the pool of donor states in 1954. For a long time ASEAN has been the biggest recipient of Japan’s ODA. The article considers the main trends in Japan’s ODA, motivation of ODA, formation of the Japanese model and evolution of payments. The author discusses the ODA assessment problems connected with the peculiarities of statistical accounting of ODA in Japan. The study shows Japan’s role as the leading donor of ODA for Southeast Asia countries. The article also considers the problem of balancing the national and global interests, contradictions of developmentalism and the concept of “human security”. The paper reveals the structure of ODA by type of assistance, objectives and recipients. The author concludes that in the near future the majority of ODA will be directed toward levelling out the economic differences between “old” and “new” members of ASEAN and probably Southeast Asia as a region will be among key recipients of Japan’s ODA in order to withstand the growing competition from China.