China is now the African continent’s biggest trading partner. It is also involved in a wide range of development cooperation projects across the continent in fields ranging from health and social policy to agriculture. The Rising Powers in International Development Programme is looking at the growing role of China in the field of international development cooperation.
As a key member of the BRICS and with recent experiences in rapid economic growth, China plays an increasingly important role – both as a development cooperation partner and as a source of development experiences – to many low-income countries.
China has achieved remarkable success with its own development. But rather than join the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) regime of traditional donors, it has instead chosen to construct ties of South-South cooperation with low-income countries, often through bilateral development partnership agreements.
What does China’s emergence as a net donor, which gives more aid than it receives, tell us about changes in global aid policy?
State of the Debate Study
Building on a long tradition of IDS work on China as a development actor, including the Asian Drivers Programme, and extensive work by Jing Gu on China’s private sector development in Africa, the RPID programme will produce a flagship ‘State of the Debate’ study. This will analyse China’s domestic policy debate on international development cooperation.
A special, forthcoming IDS Bulletin issue, edited by Jing Gu, Gerry Bloom and Xiulan Zhang and titled ‘China and International Development: Opportunities and Challenges’ is also being hosted within the RPID programme.
Image credit: Dieter Telemans / Panos
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