Before and after the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan, Korea in November 2011, a global reflection and debate about aid issue has been ongoing and an aid discourse shift from “aid effectiveness” to “development effectiveness” is also taken shape in Busan. So what’s the global background for this discourse evolution, particularly in the area of development assistance? And being both a recipient country and aid provider like China, what kind of contribution China can make for this shift itself and for the development in other developing countries, particularly in Africa? To answer these questions, we need to look and analyse the background of the change of international situation particularly after the financial crisis in 1998 and the change as well as the challenges of the existing aid architecture.

The Discourse Evolution
Official development assistance (ODA) has long been regarded as an important instrument for promoting development in developing and the least developed countries. Since 1960, almost $3.2 trillion of aid has been delivered from rich countries to poor countries. The amount of aid seems extremely huge but the result of aid seems not encouraging at all. Not only the gap between the rich North and the poor South has been widening, but also the development disparities has been worsening within the poor countries themselves. In fact, strictly speaking, not a single nation in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the focus of the international development assistance during the past decades, is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), way lagging behind in economic developments. So, what is wrong with the international development assistance? How could the development assistance do a better job for helping African countries to achieve MDG?
During the recent decade, from the Paris Declaration in 2005 to the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008, with the change of OECD-DAC’s (Development Assistance Committee-DAC of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development-OECD) conference venue (from the hub of the developed countries and the headquarter of donor’s club, Paris, to the centre of the developing continent and the capital of the recipient country, Accra), we also see the gradual focus change and mindset change somehow from the donor countries to the recipient countries. Namely, the evolving conceptual framework for development cooperation has changed from “liberalization” to “capacity development” and eventually to MDGs-based approaches. And the concepts of ownership by developing countries, alignment of aid with recipient country priorities, harmonisation, management for results (which means proper standards that could be measured) and mutual accountability (including accountability to their respective citizens and parliaments) were gradually established as the main principles for aid effectiveness. And now, with the approaching of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Busan, Korea in November 2011, the rethinking and reflection of aid issue is badly needed. Meanwhile, it is also interesting and worth to see the conference venue chosen again, Korea, being the new member of OECD-DAC club and a bridge linking the developed North and the developing South as Korean officials often claim, is an ideal venue to mark a watershed moment for the aid discourse evolution, namely the theme and focus shift from “aid effectiveness” (oriented towards inputs) to “development effectiveness” (oriented towards results).
In November 2010, at a conference in Tunis participated by the representatives of OECD, the African Development Bank (ADB), the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) and the Commission of the African Union, an unexpected struggle and dispute developed between developed countries and Africa in what was meant to be a cordial meeting between "partners" when discussing around the agenda of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Busan, Korea in November 2011. Basically, the Africa side insisted that the main theme of the discussions should be changed to From Aid Effectiveness to Development Effectiveness as a non-negotiable issue for the forthcoming summit in Korea. One participant even argued that what was proposed was not a broadening of the aid agenda to include development, but a new orientation on how aid could support the home-grown development efforts in Africa. But the idea was frowned upon by the representative of the OECD. It is said that the OECD is sensitive about the political import of this development.[①]
Why the Shift Happens Now: the Background of International Situation
The convergence of the MDGs poverty reduction agenda and the G20 agenda could be seen as the most important driving force for the shift.
On the one hand, the global financial crisis took place in 2008 has brought the G20, established at the end of 1999 and not so famous since then among the numerous international organizations, to the centre of the international stage. Within the short period of merely two years after the outbreak of the financial crisis in September 2008, G20 has already taken the financial summits five times successively in Washington, London, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Seoul. Being the fourth country to host a G20 summit and the first outside the north Atlantic, Anglo-Saxon club, especially with its own memories of the development experience still fresh, when Seoul hosted the G20 in November 2010, it has successfully broaden the G20's usual scope and original focus on the financial crisis (the previous meetings have focused almost exclusively on finance ministry type issues and coordinating responses to the crisis) and has made development issues a central part of the G20 discussions. As a media puts it rightly, “the move marks an important step in the evolution of the G20. The G7 (and then G8) included a substantial development component in its deliberations, at least in terms of aid. As a more inclusive group, the G20 is well placed as a high-level forum for leaders to seek consensus on a range of urgent development policy challenges.”[②]
The appearance of the “new donors” and their focus on development issue.
On the other hand, the increasing importance of G20 itself as well as the BRICS (South Africa’s recent accession added the geopolitical meaning and the links with African continent for the group) also reflect the rising influence of the emerging powers and their impact on development issue when they turned themselves as the “emerging donors” (versus the North “traditional donors”) or called non-DAC donors, South or “new donors” (versus “old donors”). In fact, the appearance of the “new donors” and their increasing involvement in the development assistance in Africa has changed the landscape of the global aid architecture. Comparing with “old donors”, “new donors” even don’t regard themselves as “donor” as the developed countries do, but a kind of mutual help and cooperation between the developing countries, a kind of “poor help poor” assistance which falls into the category of South-South cooperation. Since they are developing countries by themselves and just experienced all the pain and joy in the transition process, they understand thoroughly how important the “development” is for the poverty-stricken African continent. In doing so, comparing with the focus given by the “old donors” on the “software” area such as capacity building for civil societies, etc., “new donors” focus more on economic development, the sectors they are involved in are largely “hardware” and tangible ones such as building infrastructure and school, etc. Moreover, different from budget support normally taken by majority DAC countries, new donors (actually some Western development partners as well), do not, as a rule, channel money through recipient countries’ financial systems and are not transparent in the reporting of their activities in monetary terms, which usually generate concerns from DAC countries.
As a matter of fact, through years experience building and lessons taking, the “old donors” such as DAC donors have developed a set of norms, rules, and procedures that constitute the aid donor regime that unfortunately are not familiar with “new donors” yet. When “old donors” argue that the “new donors’” current aid model or approach such as tied aid, focusing on infrastructure, preferring channel aid via projects to budget and “no-strings attached” policy, etc, will not work well eventually since “old donors” themselves exactly took the same aid model before and experienced the failure. For “new donors”, however, it seems also very logic to respond that the failure itself doesn’t caused by the mode itself but by the West patriarchal behavior and the Euro-centered mindset. Since the departure point now is different, South-South cooperation versus donor-recipient relations, even the same means could lead to different aims. Moreover, they argue that it is the failure of the “old donors” aid policy itself during the past half century makes them disqualified to direct others. Actually, the African participants at the Tunis conference in November 2010 also argued that the reason advanced for the shift is that decades of aid for Africa have little to show in the way of improvements in the lives of ordinary people. Instead, the whole aid effort is in a considerable mess.[③]
The failure of Western countries’ development assistance
Actually, it is unfair to deny Western countries' development assistance to the continent in the past decades. Rough statistics show that African countries have received more than $300 billion worth of aid since 1970, mostly from developed Western nations and international financial organizations dominated by them. But now it boils down to the question: Why did this considerable assistance fail to produce tangible effects in helping extricate African countries out of poverty and boost their long-anticipated development? Not long ago, Dambisa Moyo, an Oxford- and Harvard-educated Zambian scholar who once worked for the World Bank, authored a book trying to offer an answer to this question. In the book, titled Dead Aid, which has generated heated debate, she lashes out at the Western aid policy toward Africa and its role in widening the gap between the rich and the poor. She insisted that African countries should learn from Asia, China in particular, in developing local economies and praised China's large-scale infrastructure and investment in the continent during the past few years.
With the approaching of achieving MDGs in 2015, and also the new wave of social unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya plus other North Africa and Middle East countries, we see very clearly how importance it is to improve people’s livelihood, to promote economic development and guarantee the equal, fare distribution of social public property. The history of mankind as well as the history of successful democratic changes in the world show that the poverty reduction and economic development can serve as the precondition and guarantee for political reform, the survival and consolidation of the young democracy in the developing countries particularly.
What China’s Experiences Can Contribute to the Discourse Evolution?
In August 1985, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made the following statement when he had a meeting with the then President of Tanzania, Julius.K Nyerere, “China’s reform is a pilot test not only in China, but also is meaningful internationally. If China’s reform proceeds successfully, it can offer some experiences for the socialist cause and the development of the least developed countries in the world.”[④] During the past three decades, China has achieved a remarkable economic takeoff since the advent of economic reforms at the end of 1978 and has accumulated tremendous development experiences as well as the experiences of embracing foreign aid. In fact, China now can play a bridge role for establishing a harmonious and effective international development cooperation. On the one hand, being a recipient country in the last three decades and continue to be at the moment, China has accumulated a lot of experience in terms of ownership building of the development assistance. On the other hand, through learning by doing, China now is also an important provider of development assistance itself. These dual national features that China carries have made it crucial for building a link between traditional donors and new donors, and between donors and recipients.
China’s experiences of being a recipient country
In fact, China’s attitude towards foreign aid has gone through evolution by itself. In late Chairman Mao’s era, due to the hostile relations between People’s Republic of China and the United States and then with the former Soviet Union, PRC then had simply no strong foreign allies and foreign aid to rely on and had to adopt the “self-reliance policy”. From 1960 to 1978, Chinese government hadn’t had a single cent of RMB of national and international debt. Since 1978, after China adopted the “reform and opening-up” policy and established the diplomatic ties with major Western powers one after another, China began to welcome foreign aid and regarded it as a positive driving actor for China’s modernization. In 1980, when the World Bank was willing to assist China, Deng Xiaoping said to the World Bank President Robert McNamara in Beijing, “Without the World Bank’s help, China can definitively reach its own goals. With the World Bank’s help, China will be able to develop at a faster pace”. [⑤]
With the mindset change, the aid from the west, billions of grants, loans, and funds, together with equipments, technologies, know-hows, and new ideas flew into China. According to Chinese statistics, by the end of 2007, over US$ 6.6 billion of grants and much more concessional loans and other forms of assistance landed in China. But according to OECD/DAC statistics, from 1979-2007, China had received a total of US$ 49 billion of net ODA (grants plus concessional loans and then minus the loans had been paid back).[⑥] This influx of aid was used to fund thousands of projects in over 30 areas, including poverty alleviation, agriculture, and water conservancy. And the sectoral and geographical disbursement of foreign aid in China has also moved from “hardware” projects including infrastructure and agriculture irrigation programs to “software” projects such as good governance, system reform and the rule of law, and from the coast provinces to the hinterland in the western of China.
The success of foreign aid in China can be attributed to combined efforts between donors and China, with China (esp. Chinese government) playing the predominant role and donors making indispensable contributions in terms of financial support, technology and knowledge transfers, as well as policy advice. Among the five principles elaborated in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action, in my opinion, China has done extremely good job particularly in the principle of ownership and alignment. For example, in order to highly integrate foreign aid fund into China’s national development plan (namely China’s own Five Year Planning), the Chinese government offers foreign donors a list of national development priorities and projects so that both China and donors can work together to channel the limited aid funds into key development projects, and make the best use of aid funds. On the implementation level, China sets three criteria for project application: the project should be in accordance with China’s long term national economic development policy; it should be coherent with China’s long-term plan for poverty alleviation; and it should be relevant to the local economic development plan. With the new criteria, China has developed separate managerial agencies and methodologies for receiving aid and foreign direct investment.[⑦] The strong “ownership” given by the Chinese government has also guided foreign aid for formulating their relevant strategy and arranging their programs in a long term point of view. For example, in order to synchronize China’s “Five-Year Plan” with its aid project, UNDP formulates its Country Action Plan for China once every five years, and tailors its development assistance to China’s actual situation.
China’s experiences for its own economic, political and social development
Thirty years ago, China’s per capita GDP was as many as that of Malawi. 30 years later, China claimed as the world second biggest economy while Malawi is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Why and how does the big change happen? Generally speaking, the great success China has achieved since its adoption of the reform and opening-up initiative is not a result of blind duplication of Western political and economic models. Instead, it is the outcome of the country's endless efforts to oppose Western intervention and its persistence in exploring a development path suitable for its own national conditions.
During the past three decades, China’s economic developing achievement has been widely applauded by the rest of world, including the West. However, few people have noticed that China’s economic success has been achieved together with political and social reform at home. In fact, China’s reform is across-the-board, covering such facets as the economic system, political system, cultural system and social system. Over the years, China has continued to deepen the reform in its state leadership system, election system, legislative system, decision-making system, judicial system and the system of checks and supervision so as to ensure that the economic development can be maintained and relationships among different ethnic groups and social classes can be harmonious. Although problems and shortfalls still exist, China’s political development is moving forward and Chinese people have enjoyed more and more political and social freedom than before. And this is exactly why the “Beijing Consensus” seems overtake “Washington Consensus” as a new development model for other developing countries to learn the relevance from.
Being a developmental and transitional state, China has rightly handled the relations between reform, development and stability and has taken a balanced approach for pushing the three objectives in a delicate and coordinate way. In the process of huge transition from planed economy to market-oriented economy, the big shock (materially and mentally to the people as well) and tremendous risk are unavoidable and easy to cause social tension and unrest. In order to minimize the risk and cost of the reform, “the trial and error method” has been taken and the social stability has been always regarded as the priority concern for all other reforms. Furthermore, the reform has been initiated in a gradual and “soft landing” way, started from rural area (household responsibility farming system) and township enterprises, then to state-owned enterprises reform, and eventually to the financial sector, etc. The political reform has been focusing more on expanding the political participation from all works of life and projecting a bottom-up democratic election system. Domestically and internationally, a number of political scientists have been doing research about China’s rural village elections and now the urban city community elections. When we look back of the past three decades, all the Chinese are proud of at least two things: one is the great improvement of people’s livelihood and the comprehensive strength of the country; another is that there is no big civil conflict or unrest happening during the transition and the social stability and peaceful environment has been maintained.
China’s development path also shows that a powerful, visionable leadership as well as the right development strategy and policy are very much needed. For the transitional countries, these elements are the important guarantee for embodiment of people’s consensus for nation’s modernization. In more than 60 years in the past, the relatively stable and strong leadership has led China experiencing all the tests and storms including 10 years nightmare of “cultural revolution”, the ups and downs of our relations with the West, the impact of Asian and global financial crisis, etc. The great leader Chairman Mao had successfully built up the unity and Chinese national identity that paved the way for Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform. And most importantly, Deng Xiaoping had also accomplished the institutionalization of the power succession process and led China from a man-rule to law-rule society, and from authoritarian to collective leadership. China now is facing new challenges brought upon by the reform and rapid economic development itself such as the widening gap between rich and poor, between urban and rural, the deteriorating environmental pollution and social welfare system building, etc. Actually, the process of dealing with and resolving these challenges is relevant for other developing countries as well.
China’s experiences being a provider of development assistance country
Even though China’s aid in Africa has been an international focus in recent years, China’s aid in Africa itself, however, is not a recent story at all. As early as 1950s, when the new-born People’s Republic of China itself was still struggling with rebuilding the country from the decade-long anti-Japanese war and the civil conflict later, it has spared no efforts to support the struggles of the African peoples against imperialism and colonialism and for national liberation and independence. Of all the projects, the most well known was TaZara (Tanzania-Zambia) Railway. The 1860 kilometer-long friendship railway, which involved 50 thousands Chinese engineers and workers and 64 of them sacrificed their lives, was a milestone project and has historic significance in Sino-African relations.[⑧] When I visited Zambia in September 2009, the interviewees whom I have talked with, be them officials or NGO representatives, all highly praised and stressed the influence of TaZara railway project in Zambia as well as in the Continent.
Apart from the sincere friendship and good foundation laid down in the Mao’s era, “the Eight Principles governing China’s aid to foreign countries” [⑨]put forward almost five decades ago by late Premier Zhou Enlai when he paid visits to Africa between December 1963 and early 1964, have been serving as the core values for guiding China’s aid to date. Even though the second principle of “no strings attached” particularly drew the heavy critics from the West in recent years (actually it is also exactly the main feature which differentiates Chinese aid from the Western aid to Africa), the core value of “equality”, “mutual respect” and “mutual benefit” has been cherished both by Chinese and Africans and can be regarded as one of the most important experience and value for carrying on in the years to come.
Comparing with OECD/DAC countries, there is no doubt that the recent history of China’s aid to Africa is relatively short and still in the process of “learning by doing”. However, the pace of the development is big and fast. On April 21, 2011, the Information Office of the Chinese State Council issued a white paper on “China’s Foreign Aid”, which was the very first time in history. According to the white paper, China’s financial resource for foreign aid has increased rapidly by 29.4% year on year from 2004 to 2009. By the end of 2009, China had provided a total of 256.29 billion yuan in aid to foreign countries (Africa shares 45.7% of the total), including 106.2 billion yuan in grants, 76.54 billion yuan in interest-free loans and 73.55 billion yuan in concessional loans. In terms of projects and sectors, the white paper says, by the end of 2009, China had helped developing countries construct and complete over 2,000 complete projects (including 215 agriculture projects, 670 public facilities, 390 economic infrastructure and 635 industry projects) closely linked to local people’s life and production, covering industry, agriculture, culture and education, health care, communication, power supply, energy, transportation and others.[⑩]
Over the years, China’s aid to Africa has generated effective results and contributed greatly to Africa’s economic recovery. Since 1956, China has helped African countries to establish nearly 900 projects, including textile factories, hydropower stations, stadiums, hospitals and schools, and more than half of them are related with the people’s livelihood. [11] After the establishment of FOCAC in 2000, the development assistance and investment in Africa have been improved and strengthened. At the China-Africa Summit in 2006, China announced the eight-point aid package, which included China's pledge to double its 2006 assistance to Africa by 2009, provide $3 billion of preferential loans and $2 billion of preferential buyer's credits to Africa, debt cancellation and establishment of trade and economic cooperation zones in Africa, and establish a development fund of $5 billion to encourage Chinese firms to invest in Africa, etc. At the 4th FOCAC meeting recently wrapped up in Egypt in early November 2009, a package of new development assistance to Africa from China has been issued, which put more emphasis on the projects that closely link with people’s livelihood and environmental protection, such as establishing 100 clean energy projects in Africa, providing $10 billion concessional loans, setting up a $1 billion special loan for small and medium-sized African businesses, and further opening up China's market to African products (zero-tariff treatment to 95 percent of African products and starting with 60 percent of the products within 2010) in the next three years.[12]
Furthermore, since China’s aid providing has a stronger focus on projects and managed in a bilateral way, it normally acts quicker, and with shorter procedures. Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Beijing, Sahr Johnny, once said, “The Chinese are doing more than the G8 to make poverty a history in Africa,” “If a G8 country had wanted to rebuild the stadium, we’d still be holding meetings! The Chinese just come and do it. They don’t hold meetings about environmental impact assessment, human right, bad governance and good governance. I’m not saying they are right, just that Chinese investment is succeeding because they don’t set high benchmark.”[13]
In an article published on Financial Times, Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade also described vividly about the high efficiency of Chinese aid. He wrote, “China is doing a much better job than western capitalists of responding to market demands in Africa,” “I have found that a contract that would take five years to discuss, negotiate and sign with the World Bank takes three months when we have dealt with Chinese authorities. I am a firm believer in good governance and the rule of law. But when bureaucracy and senseless red tape impede our ability to act - and when poverty persists while international functionaries drag their feet - African leaders have an obligation to opt for swifter solutions. I achieved more in my one hour meeting with President Hu Jintao in an executive suite at my hotel in Berlin during the recent G8 meeting in Heiligendamm than I did during the entire, orchestrated meeting of world leaders at the summit - where African leaders were told little more than that G8 nations would respect existing commitments.”[14]
On the other hand, of course, there are also huge challenges ahead for the sustainable development of China’s aid in Africa. Just to name a few, unlike OECD (DAC) countries, China doesn’t have an equivalent independent aid agency in charge of development assistance issue so far. Sometimes there are conflicts between ministries or departments that all bear responsibilities on aid issue. Both the Ministry of Commerce (MOC, the major administrative department authorized by the State Council to oversee foreign aid) and their extended organ---the Economic Counselor’s Office in the Chinese Embassy abroad, are all facing short of personal, experiences and professional knowledge in dealing with the huge foreign aid programs. Furthermore, the mechanism of supervision and evaluation of the aid simply doesn’t exist. The management of the capital flow and progress of all assistance projects also seems not function very well.
For further improving the development result in providing foreign aid, the international donors including China still have a long way to go. As a DFID China Workshop Report rightly pointed out, international development assistance and international cooperation “will be a process of learning, but of learning from practical rather than theoretical experience.”[15] Moreover, more attention should be paid to the needs and voices of recipient countries. For China, as the white paper concluded as saying, “the Chinese government will make efforts to optimize the country’s foreign aid structure, improve the quality of foreign aid, further increase recipient countries’ capacity in independent development, and improve the pertinence and effectiveness of foreign aid.”[16]

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