China’s Aid to Africa: Policy Evolution, Characteristics and Its Role

Abstract

With the rapid development of China-Africa relations and especially the increasing development assistance that the Chinese government has provided for African countries, there is also an increasing interest and international coverage about China’s aid policy on Africa. What is the policy and how has it developed? What kind of differences are there between China’s aid policy and Western approaches? And in the end, how should we understand or evaluate the impact of China’s aid on Africa? Over the past two years, I couldn’t count how many times I have been asked about these issues, in conferences and interviews with Western scholars, diplomats and journalists as well as Ph.D. candidates. It is this strong demand that makes me think over the aid issue that we Chinese scholars have long neglected. In this chapter, I will try to answer the above questions from a historical and a comparative perspective.KeywordsAfrican CountryChinese GovernmentRecipient CountryWorld Bank ReportAfrican LeaderThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.