China's aid practice: An example in the Pacific Islands

An Opinion on China’s “aid” practice:

From the Pacific Islands’ ”Matangi Tonga Online” contributor Fergus Hanson, author of the 22 July 2009 story “China: influence in the Pacific” wrote:

"China has stepped up its aid program to the Pacific, but until recently it was very hard to know just how much aid it was giving and what effect it was having in Pacific countries. That's because China still regards the details of its aid program as a state secret and refuses to publish details about it". Source: Matangi

Hanson goes on to explain that data gathered from reliable local sources regarding the difference between aid funds and materials promised, and aid funds delivered, did not balance.

Presumably this imbalance creates uncertainty for aid managers to confidently plan for effective delivery of programmes, and control by China on the Pacific Islanders because donor foreigners, the Chinese government, control the purse strings, and they manipulate money flow, and when the money should be stopped.

However, Hanson’s collected data of Chinese aid projects allowed him to claim that:

'The quality of the data has allowed Chinese grants and loans to the region to be disaggregated [def. separate into component parts] for the first time…" Source: Matangi

and,

"That means China is giving aid at around the same level as other major regional donors such as New Zealand, Japan and the European Community. But it still doesn't come close to Australia which gave almost $US 600 million in development assistance to the Pacific in 2007." Source: Matangi

In his attempt to gently nudge the Chinese regime to administer their aid programme similar to the standards claimed by western governments, Hanson ignores the fact that China is, after-all, a Communist regime, and not democratically governed as are most western countries. So why, one might wonder, is it not a surprise that China’s ‘aid’ programmes have the appearance of ‘foreign resources acquisition’ more than a charitable presence? <end>

N.B.Fergus Hanson is a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and is the author of the report 'China: stumbling through the pacific' http://www.lowyinstitute.org [Click on Publications, then Policy Briefs: scroll down to 22 July 2009]