MANILA — Understaffing, slowness, and internal politics plague the China International Development Cooperation Agency, or CIDCA, one year after the Chinese government announced its creation in March 2018, leaving some experts asking why so little has happened.
CIDCA is a new iteration of Chinese aid, which has historically served countries mainly in Africa and Asia. The independent bilateral agency was created to use foreign aid as a diplomatic tool and to facilitate the implementation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s $1 trillion international trade endeavor known as the Belt and Road Initiative.
“Of course it takes some time to set up an aid agency, but the pace with which things have been happening is indeed slow,” Marina Rudyak, who researches Chinese foreign aid at Heidelberg University in Germany, told Devex. “If you look at its main objectives, we see CIDCA aligning with China’s foreign policy, but we don’t see it playing a visible role in strategy development.”