However, the explosive development of China's economy is not achieved by foreign aid. While continuing to provide foreign aid, China still insists on the basic position of relying mainly on domestic resources to develop the national economy.
With China gradually becoming the world's leading economy and a large number of China enterprises "going global", China not only questioned the basic assumption that "foreign aid is crucial to economic development" in theory, but also began to challenge the mainstream international development theory with official development assistance as its core in practice.
Different from the strict system design, precise technical definition and solid theoretical foundation of western official development assistance, the development cooperation between China and Africa is more "learning by doing" and has gradually formed its own operation mode from the historical practice of China's aid to Africa.
According to the experience and lessons of China-Africa development cooperation in the past decades, combined with western international development theory, China scholars and development practitioners have also begun to establish their own theoretical framework to explain China's aid to Africa and other cooperation models.
After the reform and opening up, China began to try to reform the original aid projects in the market. After the 1990s, China completely changed its foreign aid system and gradually explored a road of aid and development cooperation with China characteristics.
The picture shows the Djibouti railway section. On the way to the trial run of the locomotive, a local living nearby warmly greeted the staff. (Figure/Oriental IC)
China's own poverty reduction and rapid development are conducive to the universal development of all mankind, but whether the foreign aid provided by China supports the so-called "mainstream" development theory, that is, the universality of the so-called "China model", politicizes the international development issue.
Practically speaking, the way China provides foreign aid and development resources, or broadly speaking, "official development finance with China characteristics" (ODF), is quite different from the official development assistance model advocated and practiced by the Development Assistance Committee of OECD.
As far as the overall economic and trade relations between China and Africa are concerned, the most prominent feature is that state-owned funds, that is, official funds, occupy a majority position. Only by comparing the composition of non-governmental loans between China and major OECD member countries, we can clearly find that the proportion of non-governmental loans in China is very small; The data of major OECD member countries is between 44% and 67%. [ 1]
The high proportion of non-cooperation between official and state-owned Kim Jae Jung is determined by the dominant position of state-owned economy in China, and strengthened by financial systems such as policy banks, which will be difficult to change in a short time.
As far as the projects supported by official funds are concerned, China's development cooperation with Africa is also very different from the western-led official development assistance. Based on the relatively mature official development assistance (ODA) model, the uniqueness of China-Africa development cooperation is mainly reflected in the following points:
1, the relationship between donor countries and recipient countries
ODA in western countries has established a one-way dependence, hierarchy and subordination relationship between donor countries and recipient countries. On the other hand, China-Africa development cooperation under the framework of South-South cooperation attempts to establish an equal and mutually beneficial cooperative relationship between the two sides. This essential attribute difference is infinitely magnified in practice, which is reflected in all levels of specific projects/plans, especially in the formulation and selection stages of projects/plans.
In the daily operation of ODA, bilateral aid agencies, multilateral development agencies and independent consulting experts of donor countries often prescribe "prescriptions" for the problems of donor countries and formulate corresponding aid programs. In recent years, although western ODA has been emphasizing on improving the autonomy of recipient countries, in fact, it is difficult for recipient countries to participate in this decision-making mechanism, so their opinions cannot be taken seriously.
In this regard, streeter En, former director of the Development Cooperation Center of DAC, put forward the core contradiction of contemporary official development assistance: "If aid projects are formulated for the benefit of recipient countries, why do donor countries need to encourage recipient countries to accept these projects by providing financial support? On the other hand, if aid projects are not conducive to the recipient country's own interests, why should the recipient country accept these projects formulated by the donor country? [2]
On the contrary, in China-Africa development cooperation, African partners usually take the initiative to put forward the list of required projects, while China chooses projects according to the feasibility of the projects, the amount of funds needed and whether it can promote the development of domestic industries in China, and signs cooperation agreements after establishing mutual understanding. This model of projects proposed by recipient countries/partners is also common in Japan's foreign aid and development cooperation, and is called "request-based model".
It can be seen that the equality and mutual benefit of China-Africa development cooperation does not stop at the propaganda level of both sides, but is determined by the decision-making mechanism based on the needs of both sides and is rooted in the core of China-Africa development cooperation.
From the effect point of view: the project selection mechanism of ODA has high theoretical rationality, but it often cannot meet the actual needs and conditions of recipient countries, and the effect is greatly reduced; The "demand-based" project selection mechanism of China-Africa development cooperation embodies the principle of equality and mutual benefit and can better absorb the opinions of partners.
However, in recent years, there has also been a phenomenon that China's aid contractors have reached an "off-the-table" agreement with the recipient governments in advance, and then fought for funds from the China government, which has caused a waste of funds in China and damaged the expected effect of aid projects to some extent. It can be seen that this mechanism is still difficult to avoid the preference of domestic political and economic factors in recipient countries for project selection.
Data map source: Oriental IC
2. Unified relief agencies.
The ODA model in western countries is mostly implemented by unified national aid agencies, such as USAID and DFID. These bilateral aid agencies work in parallel with national diplomatic agencies, support each other, and invest relatively enough human resources in research projects and aid projects.
China-Africa development cooperation is not implemented by a unified aid agency, but is promoted through the coordination mechanism between several government departments and policy banks. Limited by the administrative level, the Foreign Aid Department of the Ministry of Commerce, which is nominally in charge of foreign aid work, has no control over other departments. Therefore, China's aid and development cooperation projects to Africa are often more restricted by the traditional diplomatic departments, with extremely insufficient manpower input, rigid system design and extremely backward research work.
In contrast, USAID has nearly 8,000 employees worldwide, including nearly 5,000 local employees in the host country, and there are more than 600 non-administrative personal contracts [3]; In every American embassy in developing countries, most of them have set up semi-independent offices of USAID, employing dozens of employees, many of whom are locals; Japan International Cooperation Association (JAIC) also has nearly 65,438+0,700 staff members, and as many as 30,000 members (volunteers) of JICA overseas team of Japanese youth are deployed in local project offices in various countries to support the operation of each project. [4]
On the other hand, in China, the Foreign Aid Department of the Ministry of Commerce has only more than 200 staff members, and even with the Economic Cooperation Department, there are only a few hundred staff members; Among China's embassies in developing countries, the larger ones will set up economic and commercial counsellors' offices, and arrange several staff members, with at most one or two responsible for assistance, while the smaller ones in China often do not have commercial offices, and the commercial counsellors' offices can only handle assistance and other matters; China's aid and cooperation projects rarely employ local people to support the project operation. The allocation of human resources is seriously behind the requirements of project scale, and the implementation of China-Africa development cooperation projects can not be promoted, let alone research work.
3. The relationship between aid and international political and economic governance structure.
On the surface, ODA is only a specific provision on aid matters, but in essence it is an inseparable and important part of the western-led international political and economic structure formed after the war. ODA takes the Development Assistance Committee of OECD as the core and the bilateral aid agencies of traditional donor countries as the main force, supporting each other and having a complete system. This bilateral aid system has been supported by the World Bank, major intercontinental development banks and the International Monetary Fund, which are dominated by Europe and the United States, and has already formed a set of closed norms and paradigms.
China-Africa development cooperation has been supported by developing countries, especially emerging market countries, but it is still in a weak position in the world because it is divorced from the ODA system and norms, and it is often difficult to put forward systematic rebuttal opinions.
In fact, Japanese foreign aid in 1960s and 1970s was severely criticized by western international development theorists, and its situation is very similar to that of China now. Although Japan has done a lot of interpretation work, it can only passively join the Development Assistance Committee and accept the constraints of these norms.
4. The dispute between planned aid and project aid.
Relying on the powerful research capabilities of their respective aid agencies, traditional aid countries attach great importance to advance planning and coordination among various departments, so planned aid or departmental aid occupies an absolute dominant position in ODA. An aid plan mostly contains many subdivided aid projects, and strives to achieve the best development effect under the condition of saving resources.
For example, the aid plan for a country's agricultural sector may include sorting out soil property rights, improving irrigation systems, employment training for rural youth and improving farmers' lives. This mode of project assistance covers a wide range, even if the design is scientific, it is difficult to avoid the waste caused by multi-layer subcontracting projects. In order to solve this problem, western traditional donor governments mostly adopt the way of service procurement, and contract each project in a scheme to companies and departments with strong capabilities in their respective fields.
On the other hand, China-Africa development cooperation focuses on financial pilot work, and often adopts the mode commonly known as "package" to implement cooperation. Specifically, China draws up the total amount of financial support for a certain country's aid and cooperation projects in a certain period of time, that is, a "package", and then African countries and China contractors coordinate investment projects and put them into the "package" to win the consent of both governments. This relatively extensive cooperation mode is absolutely based on project assistance, and it is often difficult for a single project to produce radiation effect and maintain consistency, which affects the development effect.
The main reasons for implementing this cooperation model are: on the one hand, China-Africa development cooperation has a short running time, insufficient cooperation experience and imperfect cooperation mechanism; On the other hand, the lack of unified aid agencies restricts the research and design ability of aid programs, and also hinders the promotion of government-purchased services.
Agricultural experts from China are guiding local farmers in Burundi at the demonstration site of the Expert Group on Assistance to Burundi Agriculture in China. (Photo/People's Daily)
Still taking the aforementioned agricultural planning assistance as an example, the consolidation of land property rights requires legal expertise and experience; The improvement of irrigation system needs agricultural development ability and experience; The employment training of rural youth needs the ability and experience in the field of education; The improvement of farmers' life needs the comprehensive knowledge of civil affairs, social workers and welfare work. This kind of extensive coverage of professional knowledge, ability and experience can only be achieved through a unified aid agency that spans many domestic departments, and the existing inter-departmental coordination mechanism is difficult to meet all-round requirements.
Contemporary western ODA mainly improves the ability level of recipient countries by providing technical assistance, and generally does not use aid funds to invest in infrastructure construction, so planning assistance is a more appropriate way; Infrastructure is still one of the key areas of China-Africa development cooperation and naturally consists of specific projects. The mode of project assistance is simple and easy to operate, which is conducive to concentrating resources on key projects, and often only needs the participation of a government department or a company, and can also avoid the waste of resources.
5, the relationship between foreign aid and the recipient government.
Although the autonomy of recipient countries has been emphasized in recent years, ODA, born out of supporting colonial development, still emphasizes the role of bilateral aid agencies and non-governmental organizations, and often ignores the role of governments at all levels in recipient countries.
The inequality between donors is one of the essence of ODA: the donor country adopts the "conditional aid method" and requires the recipient country to accept additional conditions and carry out reforms in some areas, which in itself implies distrust of the recipient government.
These aid agencies and non-governmental organizations directly provide public goods and services to the nationals of recipient countries, and actually form a "parallel government" public service system in the fields of education, medical care and public health. This arrangement seems to have overcome the corruption and inefficiency of some recipient governments, but it is not conducive to the capacity building and long-term development of recipient governments in the long run.
Moreover, these aid agencies and non-governmental organizations often provide very generous treatment and income levels, attracting a large number of people who used to work in government agencies of recipient countries, resulting in further loss of government capacity of recipient countries and encouraging recipient countries to rely on international assistance.
On the contrary, China-Africa development cooperation emphasizes the status and role of bilateral governments. Most institutions and companies in China are not directly involved in providing public goods and services. The China International Poverty Alleviation Center (IPRCC) and the Ministry of Commerce also provide many learning and training opportunities for the governments of recipient countries to strengthen their ability to govern and serve the people of recipient countries.
Data Map Source: China International Poverty Alleviation Center
6. The dispute between "soft infrastructure" and "hard infrastructure"
As mentioned above, for a long time after the end of World War II, traditional donor countries helped African countries build a large number of infrastructures and provided a large number of related loans. However, with the outbreak of debt crisis in developing countries and the influence of "neo-liberalism" on development economics, ODA gradually gave up its investment in infrastructure construction, making it difficult for poor and weak African regions to effectively improve their infrastructure level.
The emphasis on government capacity in international development research, the prevalence of neo-liberalism and the emergence of problems in countries in transition after the disintegration of the Soviet Union [5] led ODA to pay attention to the construction of soft infrastructure, leaving the investment gap in physical infrastructure construction to private investment.
The so-called "soft" infrastructure mainly refers to intangible infrastructure such as laws and regulations, business norms and human resources. Both development economics and international development research believe that "hard" infrastructure such as soft infrastructure and road traffic also provide basic support for the daily economic and social operation of a country or region.
Since the 1990s, China-Africa development cooperation has been focused on the construction of hard infrastructure such as road traffic and public facilities. A large amount of China's infrastructure funds and strength have greatly improved the overall infrastructure level in Africa and promoted the economic development of various countries and regions. China's role in improving Africa's infrastructure has been well received internationally and has become one of the important features of China-Africa development cooperation.
7, the relationship between aid and industrial cooperation projects
Traditional donor countries, like infrastructure construction, attached great importance to the construction of productive areas in Africa in the early days, building some factories for countries in the region and promoting economic growth. However, with the gradual progress of economic globalization, these factories have gradually lost their competitiveness due to poor management mechanism and low technical level, which has triggered the reflection of international development research.
In recent years, European and American countries have introduced aid policies to protect their own industrial production-that is, policies that may lead to unemployment and economic losses of their taxpayers without using their own financial support, such as the principle of "Made in America" that American foreign aid must follow, and ODA's support for African countries' actual production fields has completely stopped.
There is basically no investment assistance to productive areas in the contemporary ODA model, and Africa with poor basic conditions cannot attract enough private investment, which seriously restricts the development effect of ODA and the improvement of the development ability of recipient countries.
China-Africa development cooperation provides African partners with a large amount of investment in the production field as "industrial assistance", such as the recently proposed international capacity cooperation project, which helps African countries realize industrialization suitable for their own development level and promote economic growth.
Most of these "investment assistance" and capacity cooperation projects do not take the form of traditional grant assistance, but combine preferential loans, preferential export credits, cooperative industrial parks and equity investments to provide start-up funds and suitable China enterprise partners for cooperation projects and help them land. This development cooperation model has achieved obvious development results, but it is difficult to be included in the existing ODA data because it does not meet the ODA standards.
8, foreign aid supervision system
In order to supervise the expenditure part of the government budget of donor countries and prevent export credit from damaging the debt sustainability of recipient countries, the contemporary ODA model has higher requirements for the transparency of funds and projects, including strict information disclosure, reporting and regular project audit/supervision system. These systems aim to ensure the best development effect of the aid budget, digest and absorb the experience and lessons in the operation of the project, and prevent the recipient countries from embezzling and misappropriating these funds.
However, for the governments of recipient countries, dozens of multilateral/bilateral aid agencies often require hundreds of detailed reports on feasibility studies, financial audits and project supervision within one year, which has caused a huge waste of resources, and the system originally established to ensure aid efficiency has also become a burden in the actual operation process.
At present, China-Africa development cooperation has not established an open information disclosure system, lacks a third-party audit and supervision mechanism, and has low transparency. This situation is not only not conducive to the two partners to learn and pass on the experience and lessons summarized in the original projects, but also makes people question the development effect of various projects in China-Africa cooperation, which is even more inconsistent with China's audit policy on financial budget and needs to be improved urgently.
Data Map Source: vision china
9. Binding problem
Conditional aid refers to the process that the donor country uses administrative means to ask the recipient country to buy the domestic products of the donor country in the process of purchasing foreign aid materials and services. Due to the imbalance of international economic development, the products of developed countries (donor countries) can be purchased with the same amount of aid budget far less than the similar products of developing countries (recipient countries), so the bundling ratio is an important factor affecting the efficiency of the use of aid funds.
With the economic structure of developed countries gradually changing from mainly relying on primary and secondary industries (the main production fields of aid materials) to service-oriented industries, traditional donor countries have greatly reduced the bundling ratio of ODA funds through decades of efforts, and countries such as Nordic and Scandinavian countries and Britain have achieved "zero bundling" of foreign aid.
Nevertheless, the various rules of official development assistance still make aid projects more accessible to contractors in donor countries. Until 2007, the proportion of aid bundling in some southern European countries was still high, such as 36% in Italy and 30% in Spain. Even in the United States, which flaunts selfless aid, its bundling ratio is as high as 33%; Even Austria, one of the countries with the highest per capita income in the world, has reached 22%. [6]
China's aid to development cooperation is also at a high level: 100% of China products are bundled with gifts and interest-free loans, while the bundled ratio of preferential loans and preferential export credits ranges from 90% to 70%. These binding terms will generally be clearly listed in the fund agreement of foreign aid cooperation projects, and will be realized in the project bidding after being approved by both parties.
In recent years, the economic strength gap between African countries and China has widened, and China's bundling policy has been criticized by the international community and African partners. In this context, the China government began to try to purchase more African products and services in China-Africa development cooperation projects to meet the requirements of reducing the bundling ratio.
10, funded financing design
From the perspective of supporting project financing design, besides technical assistance, financial assistance is still one of the main ways of contemporary ODA, that is, donor countries directly provide financial support to recipient governments and ask them to invest these funds in development projects on the basis of meeting the requirements of democracy and good governance.
Although a large number of monitoring systems have been designed for official development assistance (see point 8), corruption and misappropriation of aid funds are still widespread. Mobutu, the former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was exposed to the scandal of misappropriating more than 10 billion dollars in aid funds to overseas bank accounts. In contrast, in the infrastructure construction cooperation projects with Africa, China adopted the financing design of "exchanging resources for infrastructure", which better controlled the risk of funds being embezzled and misappropriated.
It should be pointed out that the above ten points are differences, not gaps, between the official development assistance model and the China-Africa development cooperation model. Compared with ODA model, China-Africa development cooperation has obvious advantages in many aspects, and even represents the future development trend of international development cooperation; At the same time, there are many places in the ODA model that China can learn from.
Although the ultimate goal of development assistance and South-South cooperation is the improvement of economic growth and social welfare in developing countries, the means and resources they choose to achieve this goal are quite different.
The reasons for these differences are complex, involving different countries' different development processes and different views on development issues. The most fundamental reason lies in China's self-recognition of its status as a developing country and its adherence to the principle of equality and mutual benefit in international relations.
This is mainly reflected in two aspects: on the one hand, ODA is an unequal cooperation model in which recipient countries rely on donor countries, and the rights and obligations of both sides are unbalanced; China-Africa development cooperation is an equal way of cooperation, and mutual benefit and win-win is its essential attribute. On the other hand, China, as a developing country, although its level of development is higher than that of most African countries, still faces the grim task of its own development and needs to pay more attention to its own interests in international cooperation.
In recent years, although the OECD has been trying to persuade China and other emerging market donors to join the ranks of traditional donors, China has not shown obvious interest in this. China refuses to join the Development Assistance Committee or accept the ODA paradigm, not only to maintain its independence, but also because ODA is not in line with China's basic views on Africa and development. If we apply its theoretical framework to understand China-Africa development cooperation, the result will be doomed to acclimatization.