IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v38y2017i10p2330-2346.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

China’s foreign aid system: structure, agencies, and identities

Author

Listed:
  • Denghua Zhang
  • Graeme Smith

Abstract

China’s rise as a (re)emerging donor has attracted attention over the last decade, with a focus on Chinese development assistance as a challenge to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) aid norms. Knowledge of China’s domestic aid structure is needed to understand Chinese aid abroad. This paper addresses gaps in the literature and challenges the accepted nostrum that China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) dominates China’s aid programme. Building on the authors’ experience as Chinese aid practitioners and scholars over more than a decade and drawing on over 300 interviews, the paper explores China’s aid decision-making processes by examining the main agencies, identities and informal interactions. We argue that the Chinese aid system is characterised by fierce and ongoing competition for influence among actors, especially MOFCOM, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF), as well as the companies responsible for implementing Chinese aid projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Denghua Zhang & Graeme Smith, 2017. "China’s foreign aid system: structure, agencies, and identities," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(10), pages 2330-2346, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:10:p:2330-2346
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1333419
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333419
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333419?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas MELONIO & Marine BERTUZZI & Alisée PORNET & Laëtitia TREMEL, 2019. "Towards a Sustainable Belt and Road Initiative?," Working Paper 4004c1b4-7b36-46ae-8e8e-4, Agence française de développement.
    2. Peter J Buckley & L Jeremy Clegg & Hinrich Voss & Adam R Cross & Xin Liu & Ping Zheng, 2018. "A retrospective and agenda for future research on Chinese outward foreign direct investment," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 49(1), pages 4-23, January.
    3. Hong Liu & Celia Lee & Chris Alden, 2022. "The Dynamics of Governance and Sustainable Development Goals in the Global South," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(S1), pages 5-10, April.
    4. Sara Caria, 2022. "Cooperation Regimes and Hegemonic Struggle: Opportunities and Challenges for Developing Countries," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 71-81.
    5. Marlène Guillon & Jacky Mathonnat, 2019. "What can we learn on Chinese aid allocation motivations from available data ? A sectorial analysis of Chinese aid to African countries," Post-Print hal-02005784, HAL.
    6. Tom Goodfellow & Zhengli Huang, 2021. "Contingent infrastructure and the dilution of ‘Chineseness’: Reframing roads and rail in Kampala and Addis Ababa," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(4), pages 655-674, June.
    7. Caixia Mao, 2023. "North–South development competition and the quality and sustainability of Chinese and Japanese trans‐national infrastructure initiatives," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 331-346, March.
    8. Bei, Leticia Jin, 2019. "Where does the dragon’s gift go?: Subnational distribution of China’s aid to Sub-Saharan Africa from 2007 to 2012," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101349, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Liu, Ailan & Wang, Zhixuan & Zhu, Pengcheng, 2021. "Does informal economy undermine the effects of China’s aid on its outward foreign direct investment?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 315-329.
    10. Guillon, Marlène & Mathonnat, Jacky, 2020. "What can we learn on Chinese aid allocation motivations from available data? A sectorial analysis of Chinese aid to African countries," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:10:p:2330-2346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.