China, Africa and the International Aid Architecture

This paper analyses China’s growing foreign aid and export credit programme as an element of the changing international aid architecture. The paper finds that practices governing Chinese aid and development finance diverge from clear OECD standards and norms on transparency and definitions, the management of concessional export credits, and the management of sovereign debt. In the area of environmental and social protections, corruption, and governance, the paper finds mixed results. Regarding governance, both China and the traditional sources of development finance have rules that discourage corruption in the procurement of aid, but export credits are less well policed. Neither seem to have rules for when or how aid should be restricted when a pattern of corruption characterizes an entire recipient government.
http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/WORKING%20107%20%20PDF%20E33.pdf 

A Fact Sheet on Large-Scale Corporate Farming Versus Small Family Farms

The assumption that large-scale mechanized agriculture is more productive and efficient than small family farms is influencing agricultural development policy around the world. From China to Ethiopia, developing countries are moving toward corporate farming as a way to boost production and jump-start agricultural development. But the basis of their strategy, the assumption that bigger farms are better farms, is one of the most enduring myths in global development. The key to solving the world’s current food crisis lies not with mechanized super-sized farms, but with better supporting small family farms. http://www.landesa.org/wp-content/uploads/Is-Bigger-Better-Issue-Brief.pdf 

Overview of China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment

China’s investments abroad are growing despite an overall decline globally in foreign direct investment (FDI) following the 2008 financial crisis. That trend in Chinese investments abroad is likely to continue, since China’s huge foreign exchange reserves are an increasing source of mobile capital and is a key part of China’s official government policy. The receipts from China’s existing global investments, combined with mounting trade surpluses, have made China the world’s largest capital-surplus economy. http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2011/GoingOut.pdf 

Why India needs a national nutrition strategy

Over the past 15 years India’s economic growth rate has been unprecedented. The International Monetary Fund reports an average growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) of nearly 6% in the 1990s and of 8% in 2000-10.1 The economic growth has not, however, been associated with corresponding reductions in the rates of childhood undernutrition. The National Family Health Survey, which provides India’s most authoritative statistics on nutrition status, showed that 43% of children under 5 years old were underweight for age in 1998-9; by 2005-6 the percentage had only dropped to 40%. At that rate of progress India will not reach its millennium development goal target (to halve the proportion of underweight children by 2015) until 2043. By contrast, China has already met its goal and Brazil is expected to do so by 2015.
http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/539255/field_highwire_article_pdf/0.pdf 

A growing rivalry between India, Pakistan and China over the region’s great rivers

Analysts have suggested that, given the generally dire relations between South Asian countries, water will provoke clashes rather than co-operation. A 2009 report for the CIA concluded that “the likelihood of conflict between India and Pakistan over shared river resources is expected to increase”, though it added that elsewhere in the region “the risk of armed interstate conflict is minor”.

The scarcity of water in South Asia will become harder to manage as demand rises. South Asia’s population of 1.5 billion is growing by 1.7% a year, says the World Bank, which means an extra 25m or so mouths to water and feed: imagine dropping North Korea’s entire population on the region each year. The strain of bigger populations, diminishing water tables and a changing climate could all conspire to produce a storm of troubles. South Asia is especially vulnerable.

In any case, the cost of running short of water is already becoming clearer. TheLancet, a British medical journal, reported last year that up to 77m Bangladeshis had been poisoned by arsenic—the largest mass-poisoning in history. It was the result of villagers pumping up groundwater from ever deeper aquifers.
http://www.economist.com/node/21538687 

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Will China change international development as we know it?

China has lifted a record number of people out of poverty, has had sustained levels of economic growth - at environmental and social costs - started a global economic and political rise and is developing effective responses to the global financial crisis. It is making these transformations with institutions that continue to surprise international observers. An increasing number of studies have started to articulate the lessons from China's development. This paper reviews the different interpretations of these lessons, and the process of lesson learning, and the question what China's dramatic transformations over the last 30 years imply for development studies and practice. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.1732/pdf 

Rogue aid? The determinants of China’s aid allocation

Foreign aid from China is often characterized as ‘rogue aid’ that is not guided by recipient need but by China’s national interests alone. However, no econometric study so far confronts this claim with data. The study finds that political considerations are an important determinant of China’s allocation of aid. However, in comparison to other donors, China does not pay substantially more attention to politics. In contrast to widespread perceptions, the study finds no evidence that China’s aid allocation is dominated by natural resource endowments. Moreover, China’s allocation of aid seems to be widely independent of democracy and governance in recipient countries. Overall, denominating aid from China as ‘rogue aid’ seems unjustified.

According to the Financial Times, China outperformed the World Bank as the world’s largest provider of overseas loans to developing countries through its China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank amounting to at least US$110 billion in 2009 and 2010. Tanzania was the single most important recipient of Chinese economic aid between 1956 and 1987. 62.0% of China’s economic aid between 1956 and 1987 has been provided to Africa, highlighting China’s aspirations to become the leading power in the Third World. 22.7% of China’s economic aid in this period were provided to Asia, with the intention of creating “friendly relations with its closest neighbours”.
https://ncgg.princeton.edu/IPES/2011/papers/F1120_rm3.pdf 

Rogue aid? The determinants of China’s aid allocation

Foreign aid from China is often characterized as ‘rogue aid’ that is not guided by recipient need but by China’s national interests alone. However, no econometric study so far confronts this claim with data. The study finds that political considerations are an important determinant of China’s allocation of aid. However, in comparison to other donors, China does not pay substantially more attention to politics. In contrast to widespread perceptions, the study finds no evidence that China’s aid allocation is dominated by natural resource endowments. Moreover, China’s allocation of aid seems to be widely independent of democracy and governance in recipient countries. Overall, denominating aid from China as ‘rogue aid’ seems unjustified.

According to the Financial Times, China outperformed the World Bank as the world’s largest provider of overseas loans to developing countries through its China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank amounting to at least US$110 billion in 2009 and 2010. Tanzania was the single most important recipient of Chinese economic aid between 1956 and 1987. 62.0% of China’s economic aid between 1956 and 1987 has been provided to Africa, highlighting China’s aspirations to become the leading power in the Third World. 22.7% of China’s economic aid in this period were provided to Asia, with the intention of creating “friendly relations with its closest neighbours”.
https://ncgg.princeton.edu/IPES/2011/papers/F1120_rm3.pdf