China’s foreign policy is an issue that continues to polarize the international development community.
While Asia’s economic juggernaut is steadily becoming one the world’s fastest-rising emerging donors — with more than $6.4 billion in annual official development assistance, half of which goes to Africa — most observers remain clueless on how Beijing disburses these funds, what the country’s ODA policy really is, and how it views “development assistance” in terms of addressing the world’s humanitarian needs over its own commercial and economic interests.
Part of the reason why China’s aid activities continue to be shrouded in mystery — and even misery, some development experts would say — is the lack of centralized and accessible data on Chinese ODA.