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Improving Quality of Aid through Competition and Cooperation: JICA-RI Deputy Director Naohiro Kitano Delivers Speech at Seminar on China's Foreign Aid

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Improving Quality of Aid through Competition and Cooperation: JICA-RI Deputy Director Naohiro Kitano Delivers Speech at Seminar on China's Foreign Aid

2014.12.04

DayNovember 26, 2014(Wed)
PlaceBeijing, China

On November 26, 2014, a seminar on “Estimating China’s Foreign Aid” was co-hosted in Beijing by the Institute of International Development Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), and the JICA China Office. JICA-RI Deputy Director Naohiro Kitano gave a presentation on China’s foreign aid.

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Depty Director Kitano

In his presentation, Kitano explained the results of estimates of the volume of China’s foreign aid by referring to the JICA-RI working paper Estimating China’s Foreign Aid 2001-2013, co-authored by Kitano and Yukinori Harada, which was published in June 2014. The latest ODA white paper by the the Government of China only shows the totals of committed amount over several fiscal years. Whereas the estimates by the working paper shows net and gross figures of both bilateral and multilateral foreign aid by China, based on definitions of ODA by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results of the estimates indicate that China’s foreign aid increased from around 700 million US dollars in 2001 to around 7.1 billion US dollars in 2013, by ten times over the past 12 years, which makes China to rank at sixth if compared among DAC member countries.

Kitano also explained the perspectives of aid recipient countries on its use of China’s foreign aid citing cases in Sri Lanka and other countries. He introduced the case of the agricultural sector in Africa to demonstrate how projects of China and Japan are coming close to each other at a country level. He suggested that China may be utilizing its experience as an aid recipient country effectively in its provision of foreign aid, noting that Japan has supported China’s reform and opening-up policies through both bilateral and multilateral channels in the history of Japan’s ODA which marks 60th anniversary this year.

In the panel discussion that followed the presentation, Christophe Bahuet, Country Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China, and Mao Xiaojing, Deputy Director of the Institute of International Development Cooperation (IIDC) gave comments: the significance of the estimates that includes not only by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce but also aid by other ministries and multilateral aid, and allows for comparison with the ODA of DAC member countries, the importance of the insights from aid recipient side. In her concluding remarks, Wang Luo, Director of the IIDC, stated that China is making efforts to improve its foreign aid in terms of both amount and quality and can learn a lot from the experiences of Japan and other DAC member countries, so that China fulfills its responsibilities in the international community.

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Participants

Around 60 researchers and practitioners participated in the seminar and engaged in discussions. Some of the organizations and research institutions presented include: the International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC),Peking University, Tsinghua University, and China Agricultural University, the UNDP, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Australian Embassy in China, the Delegation of the European Union to China, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ).