China's big development projects are getting smaller
China’s shift from massive infrastructure projects to smaller, self-sustaining initiatives marks a strategic pivot in its foreign aid approach, raising questions about its true motivations.
Around 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced a new catch phrase for how the country would approach foreign aid in the future: small and beautiful. The term was meant to promote community-based, small-scale, sustainable projects — contrary to the infrastructure projects of the century that China had championed for the last decade, most famously the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. Crucially, these small projects were also supposed to fund themselves by focusing on profitable and scalable sectors, such as energy, technology, and health care. Since China launched BRI in 2013, it has spent $1.175 trillion in 149 countries. This has largely been on major infrastructure projects, including $4.7 billion on a railway linking the port city of Mombasa to Nairobi in Kenya and $1.5 billion on a deep-water port to expand Nigeria’s trade capacity. In Asia, it spent $62 billion on an economic corridor between China and Pakistan, $1.3 billion on a port in Sri Lanka, and $3.6 billion on a railway project connecting Dhaka with the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh. “Small and beautiful” projects started to emerge in 2019, according to Rebecca Nadin, director of the global risks and resilience team at ODI, a global affairs think tank. These include refurbishing maternity wards in Zimbabwe after a cyclone, a Chinese garden in Jamaica to foster Chinese-Jamaican goodwill, and a mini hydropower plant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were partly a response to rising international criticism of China for inducing debt crises in low-income countries, neglecting the risks of climate change, and prioritizing geopolitical interests over local needs. But the approach was also a reaction to the economic slowdown in China and the need for less financially risky investments. In 2019, China’s economy grew by 6.1% annually, the slowest growth the country saw in 29 years. Today, with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and Europe’s aid cuts, the campaign has found a new relevance in an increasingly volatile development landscape. In February, China’s principal foreign aid agency, the China International Development Cooperation Agency, or CIDCA, released a report on “small and beautiful” development, highlighting its importance to China’s long-term foreign aid approach and announcing that the country will “scale up” the frequency of these projects. The report said that the hard infrastructure projects over the last decade have laid a “solid foundation for stimulating economic growth.” Moving forward, “small and beautiful” projects are an “important direction and priority of the BRI development,” the report said, adding that these projects “demonstrate the humanistic care and kindness of China's foreign aid and international development cooperation.” In a first-quarter press conference on March 19, CIDCA Director-General Li Ming highlighted China’s approach to the global south. “China is a natural member of the Global South, caring for and rooted in the Global South. Based on the development demands and actual needs of Global South countries, we are advancing major landmark projects and ‘small yet smart’ livelihood projects in a coordinated manner.” But experts say that “small and beautiful” is led more by a desire to reduce financial risk moving forward than to make an effective local impact. In a similar vein to Europe and the U.S., which are focusing their aid efforts on domestic gain over global need, China is — and has been — shifting its development framework to be less fiscally risky. In doing so, it’s scaling down from debt-ridden infrastructure projects to community projects. “China's emphasis on ‘small and beautiful’ projects overseas was first unveiled several years ago,” said Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “The resurgence of the catchphrase at this particular moment, when the US and other Western countries are pulling back their international development programs, is no accident.” “China is well-aware of the soft power value of its international investments and engagement,” she added. Defining ‘small and beautiful’ Between 2021 and 2024, China developed at least 200 “small and beautiful” projects around the world, according to local news sites based in China. These projects are wide-ranging: China has helped to grow alfalfa fields and developed artificial insemination technology for cows in Mauritania to encourage growth and assist with food insecurity. It has also assisted in drilling 200 borehole wells in Rwanda for clean water access, implemented a village-wide solar power project in Mali, and built a high school in Palestine. China has also worked in the Pacific islands, where it promotes the use of grass to grow edible fungi, and proposed 2,500 scholarships for government officials and training in human resources for 3,000 people from Pacific island countries from 2020 to 2025. In Sri Lanka, Chinese medical teams have conducted a campaign that provides free cataract surgeries to underprivileged patients. In Laos, Chinese enterprises have initiated projects such as installing solar streetlights and donating educational materials to schools. In September 2024, China announced plans to launch 1,000 more of these projects across Africa in the coming years. But “I think it’s hard to define what small and beautiful looks like,” said Nadin, adding that the uniting force seems to be less financial risk, rather than a particular type of impact. This approach aligns with China’s broader lending strategy in recent years. Overall, Chinese lending has significantly decreased since 2016 as China’s economic growth slowed. In 2016, China lent an estimated $28.4 billion to Africa. In 2022, lending commitments dropped to under a billion dollars. <div class='tableauPlaceholder' id='viz1743667015541' style='position: relative'><noscript><a href='#'><img alt='Dashboard 1 ' src='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Ex/ExamplesofChinassmallandbeautifulprojects/Dashboard1/1_rss.png' style='border: none' /></a></noscript><object class='tableauViz' style='display:none;'><param name='host_url' value='https%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableau.com%2F' /> <param name='embed_code_version' value='3' /> <param name='site_root' value='' /><param name='name' value='ExamplesofChinassmallandbeautifulprojects/Dashboard1' /><param name='tabs' value='no' /><param name='toolbar' value='yes' /><param name='static_image' value='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Ex/ExamplesofChinassmallandbeautifulprojects/Dashboard1/1.png' /> <param name='animate_transition' value='yes' /><param name='display_static_image' value='yes' /><param name='display_spinner' value='yes' /><param name='display_overlay' value='yes' /><param name='display_count' value='yes' /><param name='language' value='en-US' /><param name='filter' value='publish=yes' /><param name='device' value='desktop' /><param name='showShareOptions' value='false' /></object></div> <script type='text/javascript'> var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1743667015541'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width='580px';vizElement.style.height='567px';} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width='580px';vizElement.style.height='567px';} else { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height='727px';} var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); </script> <i style='font-style: georgia;'>A non-comprehensive selection of China’s “small and beautiful” projects throughout the world.</i> Experts say that this is part of China’s efforts to spend less on development. The “small and beautiful” campaign is a way to reframe that financial conservatism as a shift to locally led investment. “I think that when they’re talking about small and beautiful, they are talking about investment,” said Nadin. “Everything will get branded small and beautiful because that’s the political language of the day, but fundamentally, they are talking about the financing.” Is China trying to step in for USAID? The timing of the February report has stirred debate about whether China could attempt to fill gaps left by the U.S. development shutdown and imminent overhaul of Europe’s aid framework, but experts say that China might be capitalizing on this moment for the publicity of “small and beautiful,” but we shouldn’t necessarily expect them to step into spaces left by the West. Still, there are a few examples that show China picking up ropes dropped by USAID. In March, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or IFRC, announced a partnership with CIDCA to launch the first joint project in Asia to strengthen climate resilience in Mongolia. USAID put $2.1 million into a similar project in 2022 to help Mongolian communities prepare for and respond to natural disasters. Following the cessation of USAID funding, China pledged $4.4 million to the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, or CMAC, more than doubling the $2 million previously provided by the U.S. This funding supports demining operations that were at risk due to the withdrawal of U.S. foreign aid. Last week, Bloomberg reported that CIDCA was announcing funding for two aid programs with almost identical goals to two canceled USAID programs in Cambodia. Both programs were on education for vulnerable children — providing assistance to children with disabilities and providing school supplies. The program fits well within the framework of “small and beautiful.” China also increased financial support to Nepal, which received almost $700 million from the U.S. government in 2023 and almost $200 million in 2024 for health, education, infrastructure, agriculture, economic growth, women's and children's empowerment, humanitarian aid, good governance, environment, civil society, and media. But experts say that there isn’t likely to be an overall effort to fill these gaps. “In actuality, China is far from stepping up en masse to fill the vacuum left by USAID and others,” said Logan. “Unless a project is already aligned with Beijing's priorities, China may offer rhetorical support but expect a formal request from a host country government before taking substantive action.” She said that China is “leveraging the label to brand its growing commercial engagement abroad as meeting host countries' development interests.” But the changing aid landscape will undoubtedly play into China’s development framework. “There’s no doubt that China will see the withdrawal of the U.S. and USAID as an opportunity,” said Nadin. “I guess the question is whether they will mobilize to fill that gap.
Around 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced a new catch phrase for how the country would approach foreign aid in the future: small and beautiful.
The term was meant to promote community-based, small-scale, sustainable projects — contrary to the infrastructure projects of the century that China had championed for the last decade, most famously the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. Crucially, these small projects were also supposed to fund themselves by focusing on profitable and scalable sectors, such as energy, technology, and health care.
Since China launched BRI in 2013, it has spent $1.175 trillion in 149 countries. This has largely been on major infrastructure projects, including $4.7 billion on a railway linking the port city of Mombasa to Nairobi in Kenya and $1.5 billion on a deep-water port to expand Nigeria’s trade capacity. In Asia, it spent $62 billion on an economic corridor between China and Pakistan, $1.3 billion on a port in Sri Lanka, and $3.6 billion on a railway project connecting Dhaka with the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh.
This article is free to read - just register or sign in
Access news, newsletters, events and more.
Join usSign inPrinting articles to share with others is a breach of our terms and conditions and copyright policy. Please use the sharing options on the left side of the article. Devex Pro members may share up to 10 articles per month using the Pro share tool ( ).
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
