Abstract
Over the last decade, China has steadily increased its officially supported development finance, providing countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America with billions of dollars in concessional and nonconcessional finance. The overwhelming majority of this activity has resulted from high-level bilateral negotiations between Chinese leadership and recipient governments. The past year, however, has seen the formation of two new China-led multilateral financial institutions: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB). In effect, China has adopted a progressively more assertive outward posture and presented the existing global economic governance regime with its first major test since its establishment at the end of World War II.
Despite China’s substantial overseas engagement and recent multilateral action, the country still receives development finance from a variety of national governments and international institutions. From a development perspective, China thus challenges convention and, like other middle-income countries (MICs), straddles the divide between a developing nation requiring external assistance and an emerging power assuming global leadership roles.
This report examines China’s concurrent positions as a recipient and a provider of development finance, evaluating the objectives driving global finance flows and assessing the impact of these flows on U.S. economic and diplomatic interests. It also explores the growing connection between these two flows as inbound finance is increasingly directed at enhancing China’s outbound activities. In this pursuit, it aims to provide U.S. policymakers with a comprehensive view into Chinese development finance, ensuring the United States successfully navigates global finance for the benefit of national interests and the development community at large.
Contents
Executive Summary....................................................................................................................................................1
Acronyms and Abbreviations.....................................................................................................................................5
List of Tables and Figures..........................................................................................................................................6
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................7
Contextualizing Official Development Finance .........................................................................................................8
The OECD Development Finance Regime ............................................................................................................8
The Chinese Development Finance Regime ........................................................................................................10
China’s Outbound Development Finance.................................................................................................................14
From Mao to Mutual Benefit – The Evolution of Chinese Development Finance...............................................14
Development Finance Flows out of China – ODA-Like Finance ........................................................................15
Development Finance Flows out of China – OOF-Like Finance .........................................................................23
China as a Development Actor.............................................................................................................................37
Implications for the United States........................................................................................................................39
China’s Inbound Development Finance ...................................................................................................................41
Justifying Development Finance for the World’s Second-Largest Economy ......................................................41
Development Finance Flows into China – ODA and OOF ..................................................................................43
Case Study: The Global Environment Facility.....................................................................................................49
Case Study: The International Finance Corporation ............................................................................................52
One Country, Two Flows – An Analysis .............................................................................................................54
Is China Unique in its Dual Status?......................................................................................................................55
Implications for the United States........................................................................................................................57
Future Trends in Financial Statecraft .......................................................................................................................58
China’s Multilateral Financial Statecraft..............................................................................................................58
Traditional Multilateral Development Bank Reform ...........................................................................................63
Implications for the United States........................................................................................................................67
Conclusions..............................................................................................................................................................69
Appendix: Data Sources...........................................................................................................................................71