Under a money tree? Comparing the determinants of Western and Chinese development finance flows to Africa

David Landry

Oxford Development Studies, 2021, vol. 49, issue 2, 149-168

Abstract: China’s breakneck economic growth has been accompanied by an expanding development finance agenda. Many have hypothesized that China is undermining the West’s drive to promote good governance globally, and in Africa in particular, by predominantly distributing money to poorly governed countries. This paper explores whether the determinants of Chinese development finance in Africa differ from those of Western countries. It finds that Western countries send more development finance than China to better governed African countries—those with lower corruption levels, better democratic outcomes, and a better human rights track record (though only the latter two have a negative relationship with Chinese development finance in absolute terms). This paper also finds that bilateral trade and UN voting alignment have a stronger impact on China’s development finance than that of Western countries and that China allocates more development finance than the West to richer and more resource-dependent African countries.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13600818.2020.1865901 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:49:y:2021:i:2:p:149-168

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CODS20

DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2020.1865901

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Development Studies is currently edited by Jo Boyce and Frances Stewart

More articles in Oxford Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().