China’s Development White Paper Is Big News

A major white paper has laid out China’s new vision for its global role and responsibilities in international development. In this week’s podcast, our analysts discern a China that is poised to become this century's most prominent development actor. Read the full blog piece: https://asiafoundation.org/2021/02/17/insights-on-chinas-2021-white-paper-on-international-development-cooperation/

Transcript

Anthea Mulakala (00:03):

Hi I'm Anthea Mulakala. I'm the Asia Foundation's Senior Director for International Development Cooperation.

Ji Hongbo (00:10):

I'm Ji Hongbo. I'm the Asia Foundation's Country Representative in China.

John Rieger (00:14):

China charts a new course on international development today on In Asia, from The Asia Foundation. I'm John Rieger.

Tracie Yang (00:21):

I'm Tracie Yang. On January 10th, China's state council information office released the much awaited white paper, China's international development in the new era. The paper offers in effect a new vision for China's global role in responsibilities. In an essay in this week's In Asia blog, our country representative in China Ji Hongbo and our director of international development cooperation Anthea Mulakala describe a China poised to become this century's most prominent development partner. Anthea joins us now from Kuala Lumpur and Hongbo from Beijing to talk about the report. Anthea, Hongbo, welcome to In Asia.

Anthea Mulakala (01:00):

Hi. Thanks for having us.

Ji Hongbo (01:02):

Thank you John and Tracie.

Tracie Yang (01:03):

So this white paper is long, longer than China's two previous white papers on the subject combined. What's new about the vision presented here?

Ji Hongbo (01:14):

As you may know past white papers mainly only talked about what Chinese aid had done, and what aid had achieved, whereas this new white paper has a whole chapter on China's vision for international development cooperation. I think this type of new information in the white paper demonstrates that China wants to shape and form the international discourse with ideas and concepts of Chinese origin.

John Rieger (01:43):

Who is the audience for this document?

Anthea Mulakala (01:45):

The document is published both in Chinese and in English, so there are two audiences. Internationally, China's South-South cooperation footprint is large especially if you include investments that are made along the Belt and Road. However, there's also confusion an opacity around China's activities. Demand driven assistance is a key principle of South-South cooperation, and China has always regarded this particular principle highly in that it response to the needs, interests, requests of partner countries. So if the country for example had felt need for piece of infrastructure, or a particular intervention in healthcare or another sector, China would try to meet that need through its foreign aid or through its development cooperation. However, this tradition of demand driven assistance could create and has created the impression of a jumbled array of scattered projects lacking coherence.

Anthea Mulakala (02:56):

So the white paper lays it all out for all those inquiring minds. They tell is, "Here's what we do. Here's why we do it, where we do it, how we do it, and why it's important for China, for development cooperation, for our partners." The paper also ties together different aspects of China's cooperation, for example the Belt and Road initiative, the sustainable development goals, a new fund that China has created called the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, as well as China's new International Development Cooperation Agency. So the white paper takes a slight shift and reveals that China's foreign aid and China's development cooperation is going to be much more purposeful and targeted.

Ji Hongbo (03:42):

The white paper is facing a domestic audience in China as well. There have been questions and concerns voiced on Chinese social media, "Why China is helping Africa when China itself still has so many problems?" So the white paper talks about aid is not one way, how what China tries to do is more about cooperation and achieving common good. I think all these pronunciations hope to address these domestic concerns.

Tracie Yang (04:12):

So what's the biggest takeaway from this paper?

Anthea Mulakala (04:15):

Yeah that's a good question. For me, the takeaway for me is both what's there and what isn't there. So in terms of what's there, the planning framework thinking about where when and what China is going to do is significant. The language China uses as well definitely aligns more with international discourse, which indicates that China is a serious player in development cooperation, and is inviting collaboration, partnership, participation with other actors. I think the white paper makes that significant statement. Interestingly, what's missing is some of the discussion on the diversity of China's development actors. We saw a lot of this come out during the COVID pandemic where China's NGOs, civil society as well as the private sector were heavily engaged in humanitarian and development efforts.

Anthea Mulakala (05:15):

China doesn't talk about those in this paper. It acknowledges that they exist, but there isn't a discussion, so definitely it leaves us wanting to hear more and understand more about the future role of these critical development actors.

Ji Hongbo (05:30):

I agree with Anthea. I think the white paper has provided far more in depth data and information about Chinese thinking, the philosophy, the ideology. In think in general people are expecting more information on a country level. So it remains to be seen how this level of further transparency will be accomplished in the future.

John Rieger (05:56):

Now that the paper is out, what should we watch for in Chinese development cooperation?

Ji Hongbo (06:00):

The white paper lists three main future emphasis the first one being to build a global community of health for all. So we can see that China is actively contributing to COVID vaccine research and production and donating vaccines to some of its development partners. Another big concern is about economic growth. So there's the issue of China's loans to developing countries and how it will provide that relief and that forgiveness as part of the G20 that relief initiative as well as bilaterally in negotiation with its debtor countries. I think for the longer term we want to see further transparency of Chinese aid data. The white paper talked about strengthening Chinese aid capacity and systems including aid statistics and information system. So hopefully we'll be able to see some country level data and priorities in the future.

Anthea Mulakala (07:04):

I'll just add that I think we're likely to see increased multilateralism from China. This has been a priority area for Chinese partnerships, and we can expect more effort from China to participate in multilateral and regional platforms, create new ones that they see as purposeful, and also try to participate more in leading global governance through multilateral platforms. We'll probably see more emphasis on other aspects of the Belt and Road initiative. BRI is much more than an infrastructure platform, and we'll start to see China focus on some of the other aspects that have always been part of the BRI but haven't been emphasized. This could include the people to people and cultural links as well as aspects like the digital and the health silk road.

Anthea Mulakala (07:56):

Additionally, poverty alleviation and addressing issues associated with poverty are front and center in the white paper. We see this through an increased focus on humanware over hardware. This is especially important as we see China's lending portfolio decrease. It has decreased dramatically over the last few years, so that suggests a movement away from heavy infrastructure to more people oriented programs. So it's like an invitation to other donors to come together with China, to find common ground in the development agenda. This is a positive overture from China.

John Rieger (08:39):

The Asia Foundation's Ji Hongbo in Beijing and Anthea Mulakala in Kuala Lumpur. Thank you both for talking with us.

Ji Hongbo (08:46):

Thank you John. Thank you Tracie.

Tracie Yang (08:47):

Thank you. That's all for this episode of In Asia. Anthea and Hongbo have written at greater length about China's new development white paper in this week's blog. It's well worth a read. Until next time, I'm Tracy Yang.

John Rieger (09:01):

I'm John Rieger.

Tracie Yang (09:02):

Thanks for listening.