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

Denghua Zhang and Graeme Smith

Third World Quarterly, 2017, vol. 38, issue 10, 2330-2346

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.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333419 (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:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:10:p:2330-2346

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1333419

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().