Liberal Development: The Practice and Assumptions of Aid

Abstract

This chapter considers the debate as to whether Chinese approaches differ from Western approaches espoused by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It seeks to do this by setting out whether Chinese aid objectives or practices are different from the objectives and modalities of the OECD-DAC countries. In exploring this academic and policy debate, the chapter advances two parallel arguments. First, China’s rise as an aid donor has illuminated the pre-existing fractures in the liberal logic of the existing collection of norms, fracture that has also been facilitated by the Global Financial Crisis and the ongoing assessments of the aid system from within the OECD. Second, China, through the provision of alternative sources of aid and different ideological underpinnings for aid, is triggering responses in the practices and architecture of the OECD. Hence, it is a catalyst for changes already needed and identified rather than a cause of them.