June 21, 2017
Naohiro Kitano, director of the JICA Research Institute (JICA-RI), visited Beijing, China from late May to early June of 2017 and participated in a joint seminar held by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), French Development Agency (AFD) Beijing Office and JICA China Office.
Kitano delivered a keynote speech at the seminar titled, “Contribution to Achieving SDGs: China and International Partners” held at CAITEC on June 1. He presented an updated estimate of China’s foreign aid, which he published a note about in May, and the structure of China’s aid implementation system.
The update estimates the amount of China’s foreign aid (net and gross disbursements) from 2001 to 2015 as a proxy for China’s Official Development Assistance (ODA), as defined by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The update also compared the amount of China's foreign aid with the top-10 countries, consisting of DAC member countries and emerging providers that report aid statistics to DAC, such as Saudi Arabia.
He also introduced Japan and China's approaches and activities for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and touched upon the Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD), which aims to complement ODA by using public finance and private resources from not only DAC members but also other countries.
Many seminar participants said the update is extremely useful for understanding the overall trends of China’s foreign aid, since in many cases only a portion of the statistics is available.
At the following session entitled “Development finance in the era of SDGs—mixed financing for development and TOSSD,” Haje Schütte, head of Statistics and Development Finance Division at OECD DAC, gave a presentation on the definition of TOSSD, the reasons for promoting TOSSD and future perspectives. In the session entitled “The Belt and Road Initiative and SDGs,” President Wang Luo of CAITEC explained the relationship between SDGs and the aid package disclosed at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing on May 14-15 of this year.
Approximately 60 people participated in the seminar from China’s government organizations government-affiliated banks and research institutions, embassies, international multilateral and bilateral donor organizations and private sectors. Based on the results of the forum, participants exchanged opinions about how China can contribute to achievement of SDGs.
During his visit to Beijing, Kitano also visited the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG) in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University. He gave a lecture entitled “Development Experience and Economic Cooperation of Japan and China” at an academic discussion session hosted by Xue Lan, Professor and Dean of School of Public Policy and Management.
Kitano explained the initiatives of Japan and China for achieving SDGs, as well as how Japan’s development experience spread to China and advanced ASEAN countries before disseminating in developing ASEAN countries and Africa. Kitano also introduced an updated estimate of China’s foreign aid. His lecture was followed by a lively discussion by the professors and students who participated in this lecture.
