Abstract
This chapter concludes from the historical trajectory of Chinese agro-cooperation with Africa that how the status of being as a developing country (along with other historical experiences) has shaped China’s ‘mutual-development’ mind-set in its external development cooperation. It summarizes the three models of China’s contemporary development cooperation in African agriculture and explains the logic of ‘development package’ behind and its link with the ‘mutual-development’ mentality. The chapter also brings China back into the global IDC landscape, reflecting the ‘new’ elements involved in Chinese development cooperation and comparing that with the Northern practice. It thus calls for a broadening understanding for IDC that can allow win-win ideology and embrace diversified cooperation forms beyond the traditional ODA.
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- 1.
In addition to the key idea of ‘mutual development’, some other characteristics of China’s contemporary development cooperation models also have their historical roots. The design of the ATDC especially the commercial operation model that is entailed, for instance, while surely taking into account the dimension of promoting Chinese agro-firms to go abroad, is also evidently associated with the previous lessons of Chinese agro-aid in Africa, particularly the lack of project sustainability. This problem did not only largely reduce the developmental impacts of the aid projects, but also cause a great waste of Chinese aid funds. It is, therefore, against this specific background that the designers of ATDC brought sustainability issue to the core and innovatively brought in the business model (Chapter 3). Also, the technology-centric approach to agricultural development cooperation with Africa has a lot to do with China’s own successful experience in leveraging agro-technology to boost the growth of the sector (Chapter 2). In terms of experiences with other donors, which are less touched upon in this thesis but could be good examples for the historical imprints, the ‘development package’ model, for instance, is believed by some scholars to be influenced by Japan’s ODA practice in China as well (Bräutigam 2009), and China’s insistence on non-interference may well be linked to its earlier negative experiences with the Soviet Union trying to intervene Chinese policy making in the 1950s in exchange for aid to China (Niu 2010).
- 2.
The original quote is, ‘It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice’.
- 3.
That said, the ‘development objectives’ as defined by the traditional donors have been kept changing through the past seven decades—first ‘economic growth’ (through promoting productive sector and infrastructure development as in the 1960s), then ‘poverty reduction’ (through emphasizing agricultural and social sector development as in the 1970s and 1990s), ‘macroeconomic reforms’ (as in the ‘Structural Adjustment’ period in the 1980s) and more recently ‘good governance’ (as in the late 1990s). This sort of recipient-oriented, but essentially donor-dominated, development objectives as well as their evident lack of consistence, cannot be said to have brought particular benefit to the recipient countries. Moreover, the inconsistence of donor-defined ‘development objectives’, while reflecting the prominent development challenges and prevailing development thinking at different times, hasn’t been devoid of donors’ manipulation in order for own political and economic advantages (see, for instance, Hjertholm and White 2000).
- 4.
This does not exclude, for instance, the actual practice of tied aid that used to be widely adopted by Northern donors and started to be reduced (to varying degrees) only from the turn of the new century.
- 5.
As noted in the Introduction, despite a growing trend, the practice of development PPP among Northern donors is still relatively marginalized compared to that of the traditional ODA model. In addition, the OECD-DAC also uses the concept of ‘associated financing’ which includes ODA and/or OOF (other official flows) and/or export credit or other transactions (Hynes and Scott 2013, 6), partially to differentiate and facilitate the calculation of other kinds of financial flows into developing countries from ODA. But the volume of ‘the other flows’ pales in comparison to ODA. In 2017, for instance, the total ODA by DAC members was about $147 billion while the OOF and officially supported export credits were $2.3 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively (OECD.Stat online database).
- 6.
- 7.
They are exempted from the Recommendation made by OECD-DAC.
- 8.
Though perhaps more transformative and difficult for the former for reasons discussed before.
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Jiang, L. (2020). Conclusion. In: Beyond Official Development Assistance. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9507-0_6
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