WASHINGTON — Perhaps the most important structural change in the global development sector is China’s rise as a donor. It’s also among the most poorly understood.
Much of that lack of clarity can be chalked up to the opaque nature of Chinese policy-making and government. Another reason is that Chinese aid has little interaction with aid from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. There’s little co-financing, co-creating, or even co-convening around development issues.
What is known is that Chinese aid is becoming more institutionalized and much, much larger. There’s the $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative and the $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, both providing debt financing for large-scale infrastructure.