There are so many things wrong in the WSJ op-ed that I hardly know where to begin. Most importantly, the study followed the same deeply flawed methodology (and indeed, used the data from) the notorious 2009 Congressional Research Service study that relied on a group of students at the NYU Warner School to collect media reports on any story of direct investment, mergers and acquisitions, trade finance, bank loans, equity funds, and so on, that appeared to have anything to do with the Chinese government. Adding all of this together, and without apparently investing much in checking the media reports for accuracy, or thinking much about why the purchase of an oil well should be counted as "aid", Rand has come up with some truly preposterous figures. According to Rand, China is budgeting more than twice as much on aid as on defense: $189 billion in 2011 alone. Can these researchers be serious?
This report was done, in part, for the US Department of Defense. I have to wonder what they will do with these ridiculous figures. Will DOD relax, because a generous China appears to be spreading aid around the world rather than building its military? Or will they demand a bigger share of our own aid budget in order to counter all of this nefarious "Chinese aid"?
For the record, China does have "official development assistance" that looks much like ours, as I've tried to explain across several chapters of The Dragon's Gift (apparently it's not in the library at Rand...). Below are the actual external assistance expenditure budgets for the last decade (source: China Statistical Yearbook). This includes grants and zero-interest loans, and any subsidy provided to make the relatively small set of concessional foreign aid loans [优惠贷款] provided by China Eximbank as one of its many loan instruments, concessional enough to qualify as official development assistance (ODA). In recent years, however, China Eximbank has apparently done all of the subsidies through its own profits, cross-subsidizing these loans and not drawing on the budget.
So in 2011, China allocated direct expenditures of about $2.5 billion on official aid (grants and zero-interest loans; see Table 1 below). These figures cover all the short term training courses, the youth volunteer program, military aid, some turn-key projects funded by grants and zero-interest loans (like stadiums, hospitals, schools, agro-technical demonstration centers, government buildings) but does not include the concessional loans. According to official figures from the State Council, between 1960 and the end of 2009, "China had provided a total of 256.29 billion yuan ($37.7 billion) in aid to foreign countries, including 106.2 billion yuan ($15.6 billion) in grants, 76.54 billion yuan ($11.3 billion) in interest-free loans and 73.55 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) in concessional loans" [exchange rate is for 2009]."
Concessional foreign aid loans have been growing rapidly. However, in 2011, by my estimates, China Eximbank committed no more than $8 billion in concessional foreign aid loans, and disbursed much less . (We'll see how close I was when the official figures are released). This would mean at most, a total of $10.5 billion in official development aid commitments in 2011, not $189 billion. Preferential export credits are not official development aid, and would be additional to this, but they are unlikely to be higher than $8 billion in 2011. Finally, most of China Eximbank's export credits -- the bulk of their funding flows -- are not subsidized and not concessional.
For more on this, see The Dragon's Gift, my book on Chinese aid, or two papers I wrote in 2011: "Aid with Chinese Characteristics" and "Chinese Development Aid to Africa: What Where Why and How Much?".
Table 1: China's External Assistance Expenditures, Annual (billion)
(exchange rate is the IMF annual rate)
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | |
| RMB | 4.6 | 4.7 | 5.0 | 5.2 | 6.1 | 7.4 | 8.2 | 11.2 | 12.6 | 13.3 | 13.6 | 16.0 |
| US$ | .55 | .57 | .60 | .63 | .73 | .91 | 1.03 | 1.47 | 1.87 | 1.95 | 2.00 | 2.46 |
5 comments:
If those figures don't include concessional numbers then they understate quite a bit the amount of aid that is given. What is the motivation on the part of the Chinese government for going overboard in understating its assistance?
@Anonymous: The budget figures don't include the concessional loans because there is no central budgetary outlay for these loans. They are funded via bond issues, repayments of older loans, and profits, equity shares from the central govt, and so on.* The only central budgetary outlay would be the subsidy that allows the interest rate to be lower. This has been included in the past, but in the last few years, I'm told that China Eximbank has been able to cross-subsidize the lower interest rate on the concessional loans from its commercial loan profits.
This data from the China Statistical Yearbook is simply what is budgeted/spent in each year. It is not, in my view, an understatement. In fact, it's more honest. Donors that still give loans, like the World Bank, list loans as equal to grants in their statements of new funding commitments. This overstates the real value of their aid. For example, see this press release: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/07/25/world-bank-mobilized-record-support-for-africas-economic-growth-and-development-prospects-in-fy-13
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*For an explanation, see http://english.eximbank.gov.cn/businessarticle/activities/fund/200905/9402_1.html
Hey, why do you allow anonymous comments on your blog? Even if you did underestimate things, it was surely not by 187 billion (he, he). In any case, bravo for knocking down some more never ending nonsense!!!!
Hey Dwayne, thanks. It's a lot faster to comment anonymously if you don't have an account with Google. Anyone can post, without going through the hassle of joining. I do moderate the comments -- to stop spam.
I have read your Dragon gift book. That really opens my eyes and how business in Africa is getting along with China.
"Surprisingly, garment imports from America, the second-hand clothing called mivumba in Uganda, salaula in Zambia, seriously bruised the infant clothing industries in Africa. The dated blouses and old jeans that you gave to your local charity are as likely as not to end up pressed into bales, packed into a container, and sold wholesale to African market women. The United
States is one of the biggest exporters of used clothing to Africa, something that should not surprise anyone who has wondered where on earth a rural Kenyan teenager obtained his Che Guevara t-shirt."
But it seems every time news of China from bloomberg, washington pop up, they all have some forms of errors in monetary issues, currency exchange and such. In this case, I wonder "Why don't they hire some professional to work on those report?"
Or their employees expertise are placed wrongly in terms of reporting? But they keep doing such thing? Or it is too much for those Journalist to hire a Ph.D graduate who could easily work on those affairs?
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