Israel 'Paid Off' After Iran Nuclear Deal With a $1 Billlion Hike in Aid Added to the $3.1 Billion They Already Receive Annually

Adapted from Illustrations by David Goehring and DonkeyHotey.

By Gili Cohen
Israeli and American teams are putting together a plan to increase annual U.S. military aid to Israel by as much as $1 billion, on top of the current $3.1 billion, a source close to the military aid process said Wednesday.

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Talks on military aid started recently, and are now being discussed by the professional staffs of the two countries’ defense establishments. For now, Israeli defense officials are calling news of the large aid increase “rumors.”

Israel refused to hold talks on the military aid framework and the “compensation package” it will receive because of the Iranian nuclear agreement, until that agreement was approved.

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Africa’s Last Colony: Western Sahara

In lieu of a solution: Oxfam and the European Commission deliver humanitarian aid to the camps
around Tindouf. Flickr / European Commission DG ECHO. Some rights reserved.

By Oscar Güell

As 2015 opens, the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara have been waiting for a self-determination referendum for four decades. They will wait longer due to the passivity of the international community.

“The biggest poverty that exists in the world is to lose your territory; we are not in our land and others are taking advantage of our wealth,” said Mahmoud Dellal, asked about the poverty in the refugee camps of Tindouf in Algeria, where he had spent more than 25 years of his life. He is one of the thousands of inhabitants of Western Sahara who had to leave the country 40 years ago, when it was occupied by Morocco.

Dellal lived in a refugee camp until 2000, when he moved to Spain because his wife had health problems which could not be addressed by the precarious health service there. But he doesn’t feel Spain is his home—only the Sahara. “Any person feels fine where he comes from; when you live in exile you lose your dreams,” he said. He is convinced that “Sahrawis will never stop fighting for what is theirs”.

The last colony in Africa, Western Sahara is divided by the second longest wall in the world (after the Great Wall of China). Located between the west of the desert and the Atlantic, it was assigned to Spain in the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the major European states distributed the African continent among themselves.

In 1965, with the world immersed in a decolonisation movement, the United Nations asked Spain to do likewise (it was then called Spanish Sahara). Spain abandoned the territory but it did not let the Sahrawis express their self-determination right as the UN resolution had sought: it transferred control to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975, by means of a tripartite agreement, the Madrid Accords.

When the agreement became effective, the Polisario Front, born in 1973 to fight the Spanish coloniser, waged war against Morocco and Mauritania, proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and created refugees camps in Algeria to host Sahrawis who escaped persecution by the occupying armies. In 1979 Mauritania withdrew but Morocco (with the support of France and the United States) continued the war against Polisario (supported by Algeria).

Hostilities were prolonged until 1991, when the parties agreed a ceasefire overseen by the UN, which organised a mission (MINURSO) to monitor the situation and organise a referendum on Sahrawi self-determination. But the referendum never took place, due to irreconcilable differences between the parties as to who had the right to vote. The UN continued renewing the MINURSO mandate annually, without any progress.

Unique

Nowadays, Western Sahara is the unique non-self-governing territory in Africa. The UN never recognised the Madrid Accords, because the arrangement “did not transfer sovereignty over the territory, nor did it confer upon any of the signatories the status of an administering Power”. Nor has the International Court of Justice recognised Moroccan sovereignty.

Therefore, according to international law, Spain remains the ‘administering power’, and decolonisation should end with the application of “the principle of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the people of this territory”. Nevertheless, any solution to the conflict seems remote.

The parties have very distant positions and the international community does not press them to achieve a solution. “Unless an unforeseen event will occur, this problem will not be solved because nobody wants it to be resolved,” said a Spanish expert on the Maghreb, Tomás Bárbulo. In the documentary Hijos de las Nubes the former French foreign minister Roland Dumas said that “no solution is the solution”. But what is really making this conflict irresolvable?

Polisario, recognised by the UN as the representative of the people of Western Sahara, is determined to get a referendum on self-determination. International law supports this, so the front is immovable. “We are not asking for anything strange—it is written in all UN resolutions and in the International Court of Justice,” said Mohamed Yumani, a member of Polisario and president of the Saharan Immigrant Association in Aragon (Spain).

On the other side, Morocco has always claimed—despite the UN’s contradiction—to have held sovereignty over Western Sahara before the Spanish colonisation and it attaches complete validity to the Madrid Accords, as “duly registered at the UN’s Secretariat General”. It accuses Polisario of blocking negotiations and having a “biased” understanding of self-determination, which it says need not necessarily be exercised through referendum—although this was already what the UN had called for in 1966. Morocco proposed an autonomy plan in 2007 but it is not in hurry to find a solution.

The Moroccan government feels comfortable with the status quo, which allows it to control and act as de facto administrator of most of the territory. Western Sahara is divided from north to south by a sand wall of 2,700km—further than from Madrid to Copenhagen—built by Morocco during the 80s. Nowadays, the Alaouite kingdom controls everything west of the barrier, including all the habitable territory and the natural resources.

Reserves

Phosphates and fisheries and (possibly) offshore oil and gas make Western Sahara one of the richest parts of the Maghreb. The BuCraa mine in the north contains one of the biggest reserves of phosphates in the world and, according to Western Sahara Resources Watch, generated the equivalent of $330m for Morocco last year. The EU is negotiating a fisheries agreement with Morocco for access to Western Sahara’s waters, worth €40m per year.

East of the wall, the area controlled by Polisario, there is only desert inhabited by some nomadic tribes. In the area occupied by Morocco, 70,000 natives mix with 150,000 Moroccan settlers, while there are some 165,000 refugees in the camps in Algeria and a further-scattered Sahrawi diaspora. Mohamed Yumani, who spent two decades in a camp, said that “life there is extremely difficult”. Sandstorms are common and the temperature reaches 50C in summer.

The camps, controlled by Polisario, are completely dependent on international aid, which has been reduced since the onset of the economic crisis. Gonzalo Moure, a Spanish aid worker who has visited several times, has seen evidence of child malnutrition. Yet Dellal envisages being back in Tindouf when his wife recovers.

Rabat has invested in Western Sahara—indeed its development and social services are superior to Morocco proper. But freedom is denied to those who favour independence or even a referendum. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, echoed complaints of abuses of civil and political rights in his last Western Sahara report—“particularly in the form of arrests without warrants, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in detention, confessions extracted under torture or violation of the right to a fair trial”.

Realpolitik

But the international community remains inert. “Western countries are interested in the Moroccan occupation because it provides iron control in a region that is a space of jihadist activity,” said Bárbulo. Their governments are applying Realpolitik, prioritising geopolitical and economic interests over international law and human rights.

Stephen Zunes, Middle East expert at the University of San Francisco, said in Hijos de las Nubes that the US “is unfortunately quite willing to sacrifice fundamental principles of international law in the name of supporting a strategic ally”. In his book about Western Sahara, Zunes asserts that France and the US have not only provided Morocco with material support but have dominated the approach by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to the conflict, avoiding condemnation of the occupation.

In 2013, during the debate on the annual renewal of MINURSO, the US proposed monitoring human-rights violations in Western Sahara but, due to Moroccan pressures, this was left out of the final resolution. In November that year, the king, Mohammed VI, visited the US president, Barack Obama, and the White House declared Morocco’s autonomy plan “serious, realistic, and credible”. Morocco has also invested roughly $20m since 2007 in “lobbying policymakers and soliciting sympathetic coverage from journalists in the United States”, according to an article published in Foreign Policy last February.

Among Western countries, Spain has an added responsibility as the de jure administering power. It acts, however, like the others: it doesn’t defend Moroccan occupation openly but its inaction supports it. A report that sets the basis of Spanish foreign policy for the next years says that an independent Western Sahara would be “non-homogeneous”, with inhabitants “susceptible to radicalisation”.

Gulf remains

Is any solution possible? Juan Domingo Torrejón, researcher in international relations at the University of Cadiz, points out that Chapter VII of United Nations Charter allows the Security Council to press ahead without the agreement of the parties. Yet the substantive gulf remains: “A solution based on the strict application of the self-determination right would be totally contrary to Moroccan interests, and France would veto it in the UNSC, but I neither see it possible to impose a formula favourable to Morocco without asking the population, because it would raise serious legal questions.” Torrejón also warned that “a favourable solution for any of the parties could cause instability in the Maghreb”.

This risk of instability favours the status quo, as a 2007 cable involving European diplomats published by Wikileaks indicates: “For Europe as a whole, the principal interest is that Morocco has been an island of stability in a crucial but shaky near neighbourhood; this stability must be preserved, so a solution to the Sahara problem that destabilises Morocco proper is undesirable.”

Last April, the MINURSO mandate was extended for one year more without any relevant change. In August, the Canadian Kim Bolduc was supposed to replace Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber as head of MINURSO but at time of writing she had not been able to travel to her post—Morocco was apparently displeased that it had not been consulted about the appointment.

For Torrejón the stagnation can be also dangerous because the situation may deteriorate further: “There is not a solution on the table, the humanitarian conditions in the refugees camps are getting worse and tension between the parts in the territory controlled by Morocco has increased.” Meanwhile, said Bárbulo, young people in the camps wanted to go to war because they had seen how their parents lived “and they don’t want to live like them”.

Joining a war without prospect of victory makes no sense but the perspective is different in the camps: the emotions play a bigger role there and refugees have lost faith in the international community. “Young people don’t want to bear more and, even if we don’t arrive until the end, at least we will teach something to Morocco,” said Yumani.

And Dellal takes the long view: “Who thought that apartheid was going to end in South Africa?”

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

'US Gives Too Much to Israel': That's What 6 in 10 American Citizens Think — Says Google Survey

By Robert Barsocchini
Surveying Americans about U.S. aid to Israel requires putting it into proper perspective. Given Israel’s position as the leading single U.S. foreign aid recipient (by a wide margin), as in 1989 asking the foreign aid question requires embedding relevant data to obtain a bona fide response.  When such data is included, the majority of Americans (60.7 percent) believe U.S. aid to Israel is excessive.  The major response, that aid to Israel is “Much too much” is 33.9 percent of Americans.  Some 26.8 percent believe it is “too much” while 25.9 percent believe it is “about right.” Only 13.4 percent of Americans believe U.S. aid to Israel is not enough.

The policy and political implications of this finding are stark.  Elected officials passing ever larger aid packages and supplemental spending for Israel simply cannot claim they are representing the majority interests of their constituents.  American presidents proclaiming the U.S.‐Israel bond is “unbreakable” cannot claim such a bond is willingly underwritten by U.S. taxpayers.  The finding also shines yet more light on Israel lobby organizations as the major factor coming between most constituents and their representatives and quietly working to ensure that Israel’s majority share of the U.S. foreign aid budget continues.

The survey also finds that, in particular, younger US citizens are strongly opposed to the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, and, crucially, finds that “Only the Wealthiest Americans believe U.S. aid is ‘about right’”:

The only category of Americans (47.6 percent) who believed U.S. aid for Israel is “about right” is the segment earning $150,000 or more (although even 42.9 percent in that category thought aid was too high).  The next lower income category, $100,000‐149,000 is the most vehemently opposed to aid, with 79.5 percent believing it is too high (42.9 percent responding “much too much” and 36.6 percent “too much.”)

While the Google report says the findings are “stark”, they are precisely consistent with the findings of the recent study out of Cornell and Northwestern universities, the largest study of its kind to date, which looked at nearly 1,800 individual US policy issues and found that the average US citizen has zero impact on those policies, while the wealthiest citizens essentially get exactly what they want, meaning they dictate US policy (and they largely comprise the US government).

This Google survey simply singles out one of the policy issues, which together illustrate that the USA is not a democracy, but a society in which people are allowed to choose which of two corporate-backed figureheads they want as the face of an oligarchy that dictates government policy in its own interest.

It is also worth noting here that 1) the top ten recipients of US aid (with Israel as #1) all, like the US itself, have torture regimes, 2) US law “prohibit[s] U.S. foreign aid to nuclear weapons states such as Israel that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, and 3) Obama, while repeatedly insisting the US is a “nation of laws”, requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever (among many other blatantly illegal acts).

_________
Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics.  He also writes professionally for the film industry.  Here is his blog.  Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities.  Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

China’s Foreign Aid: How Big Is It and What Is Its Aim?

Illustration by futureatlas.com.

China has greatly increased its foreign aid to developing countries in the recent years. On one hand China hopes to promote bilateral relations with recipient countries to enhance economic and trade cooperation; on the other the fast rising nation is shouldering its international responsibilities and promoting poverty reduction.


By Luo Jianbo and Zhang Xiaomin

ABSTRACT: From 2010 to 2012, China allocated a total of 89.34 billion yuan (14.41 billion U.S. dollars) worth of foreign assistance. This amount no doubt is much smaller than the official development assistance of some big traditional donors such as the United States. However, as a developing country, China has tried its best in this regard. There is no need to deny that, by providing foreign aid, China hopes to promote bilateral relations with recipient countries, and to enhance the economic and trade cooperation with them. But most importantly, China is committed to promoting poverty reduction and development of the recipient countries, so as to finally realize the goal of common development together with other developing countries. China is willing to shoulder its international responsibility.

At present China has become the second largest economy in the world and is more and more engaged in the Asian and African affairs. As a result, China’s foreign aid has become a heated topic all over the world. How big is China’s foreign aid? How much of it goes to Africa? What are China’s motives? These questions have constantly been raised by the international community. However, no final answers have been provided so far. This article aims to address the above questions from the perspective of Chinese scholars.

HOW BIG IS CHINA’S FOREIGN AID?

In 2008, NYU Wagner School released a report which pointed out that China’s foreign assistance and government-supported economic projects in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia grew from less than $1 billion in 2002 to $27.5 billion in 2006. [1] In 2012 and 2013, AidData, based at the College of William and Mary, compiled a database of thousands of media reports on Chinese-backed projects in Africa from 2000 to 2011. According to the database, China financed 1,673 projects in 50 African countries, amounting to a total of $75 billion of Chinese government’s official financial aid commitments, roughly similar in volume with the U.S. Foreign Aid to Africa (which reached $90 billion in the same period). [2] Unfortunately, in the above statistics, China’s foreign aid to Africa was apparently exaggerated a great deal, for it muddled up China’s foreign aid to Africa with China’s investment in Africa.

China's Information Office of the State Council issued the first White Paper on China's foreign aid in 2011. According to the 2011 white paper, China’s total foreign aid provided from 1950s to the end of 2009 amounted to 256.29 billion yuan ( The Chinese government didn’t put it in US dollars in the White Paper), 45.7% of which went to African countries. [3] On 10 July 2014, a second White Paper on China’s foreign aid was released. According to the reported statistics in this paper, foreign aid offered by China totaled 89.34 billion yuan (about 14.41 billion US dollars), 51.8% of which went to African countries.

Just as what the foreign observers have noticed, China’s foreign aid has been increasing tremendously ever since 2000. Based on the information, data and references available, the writers estimate the amount of China’s aid and the percentages of foreign aid in GNI since 2000 .as follows: China’s foreign aid increased from $0.64 billion, accounting for 0.05% of GNI in 2000, to $5.04 billion, accounting for 0.095% of GNI in 2009. From 2010 to 2012, China allocated a total $14.41 billion worth of foreign aid, accounting for 0.06% of the GNI in this period.

Table 1 China’s foreign aid since 2000 and the percentage of GNI

cc Pz

Factually, it can be demonstrated that that China’s foreign aid has fast increased over the past decade. However, the total volume of foreign aid from China is still small in comparison with the Western traditional donors’ aid. In fact, there still lies a great gap between China and the traditional donors in this regard. Take 2012 for example (Table 2). During that year, the United States offered a total of $30.824 billion worth of foreign aid to Africa, accounting 0.19% of its GNI; the United Kingdom offered a total of $13.892 billion, accounting for 0.56% of its GNI; Germany, France and Japan provided $12.939 or 0.37% of GNI, $12.028 billion or 0.45%, and $10.605 billion, or 0.17%, respectively. Although none of the above-mentioned countries reached the target of foreign aid accounting for 0.7% of its GNI, a goal set by the United Nations early in the 1970s, they did provide tremendous amount of foreign aid to developing countries.

Table 2 Net foreign aid of main donors and its percentage in GNI in 2012

cc Pz

Source: OECD, “DAC Members' Net Official Development Assistance in 2012”,
http://www.oecd.org/statistics/(2014-07-22)

Measuring the volume of China’s foreign aid has sparked a huge debate about what should be counted as aid and what should not. Some foreign analysts and scholars just mix the government concessional loans with other commercial loans by the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and other commercial banks. Some have simply confused China’s foreign aid with investment. Consequently, they exaggerated a great deal the actual volume of China’s foreign aid. The financial resources for China’s foreign aid mainly include three types: grant (aid gratis), interest-free loans and concessional loans. From 2010 to 2012, China provided a total of 32.32 billion yuan worth of grants, accounting for 36.2% of its foreign aid volume; 7.26 billion yuan worth of interest-free loans, taking up 8.1% of its foreign aid volume and 49.76 billion yuan worth of concessional loans, accounting for 55.7% of its total foreign aid volume. The concessional loans are raised by the Export-Import Bank of China on the market, with the loan interests lower than the benchmark interest of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank， and the difference is covered by the State in the form of financial subsidies. At present, the annual interest rate of China’s concessional loans stands at 2% to 3%, and the period of repayment usually ranges from 15 to 20 years (including five to seven years of grace).

It should be noted that China Development Bank doesn’t provide foreign aid at all, and the concessional loans granted by the Export-Import Bank of China are just one part of its business. Both banks support Chinese enterprises in conducting overseas businesses through offering commercial loans and providing financing and investment services. For example, in recent years, the Export-Import Bank of China financed the Ethiopian Oriental Industrial Park and the Ethiopian Railway Project; China Development Bank offered financial support to the Guangdong Guangken Rubber Group Co., Ltd. for the construction of its manufacturing/processing base in Southeast Asia, namely the Oman Salalah power Generation and Sea Water Desalination Project, and invested $198 million to support Wanbao Grains & Oils Co., Ltd in the construction of Mozambique Agribusiness Project, the largest one of its kind by China in Africa which can create an integrated chain from crop planting, food processing and warehousing to distribution. However, the funds offered for all the above-mentioned projects by the afore-mentioned banks are non-concessional development funds. They can’t therefore be counted as foreign aid at all.

As a developing country, China by no means plans to keep up with Joneses in regard to foreign aid. According to the poverty standard set by the UN, China still has more than 100 million people living in poverty, which means that China still faces the difficult challenge of poverty reduction and development. On the other hand, when you take the size of its economy into consideration, China is indeed a big power, and in fact it is ranked as one of the fastest developing countries in the world in recent years. Accordingly, the international community expects China to shoulder more and more international responsibilities. Offering foreign aid to underdeveloped countries especially those suffering from humanitarian crises, is also an important way for China to demonstrate and prove that it is a responsible power. Thus, it can be predicted that China will surely increase its foreign aid concomitant with its economic development in the coming years.

WHAT IS THE AIM OF CHINA’S FOREIGN AID?

During the past decades harsh criticism has been leveled against China, accusing China of using aid to recipient countries, to scramble for resources and overseas markets there; to dig for political support from them or especially to maintain close relations with some rogue states.

There is no need to deny that China’s foreign aid serves its overall foreign relations and national interests. China also expects to deepen relations with recipient countries and win the hearts and minds of the people of those countries - just as Western donors do. By providing foreign aid, China demonstrates its willingness to shoulder more and more increasing responsibilities. These can facilitate China to enhance its soft power and image within the international community. At the same time, by helping recipient countries build some economic development-related projects, China expects to reap trade, investment and contracts opportunities overseas, especially for Chinese enterprises going abroad. As a developing country, China never considers foreign aid simply as a donation, but an important form of South-South cooperation to advance the mutual benefit, win-win and common development of China and other developing countries.

The international community should also recognize that, other than the pursuit of its own national interest, China’s foreign aid prioritizes poverty reduction and economic development of the recipient countries. The Chinese people, just like any other people in the world, are imbued with a strong sense of humanitarianism. Although the Chinese political system is different from that of Western countries, the Chinese government is fully aware of its international responsibilities beyond its national interests and strives to fulfill them adequately. Currently, China is dedicated to the path of peaceful development and the realization of common development and prosperity of the whole world. As we all know, many developing countries and regions of the world are facing challenging problems related to poverty, civil wars, conflicts, humanitarian crisis and so on. It is so manifestly obvious that China is doing its best to shoulder more international responsibilities by helping recipient countries tackle the above-mentioned problems, through providing foreign aid to them.

Just as the 2014 White Paper on China’s foreign aid put it, the Chinese government “has endeavored to integrate the interests of the Chinese people with the interests of the people of other countries, providing assistance to the best of its ability to other developing countries within the framework of South-South cooperation to support and help other developing countries, especially the least developed countries.”

From 2010 to 2012, China helped build 80 residential housing and affordable housing projects in other developing countries, totaling about 600,000 square meters in floor space; China helped build about 80 medical facilities projects in recipient countries, providing them with about 120 batches of medical equipment and medicine, and dispatching 55 medical teams composed of 3,600 medical workers to nearly 120 medical centers in 54 countries, treating nearly 7 million patients. Moreover, China donated 1.5 billion yuan worth of materials and cash assistance in emergency humanitarian aid to more than 30 countries. [4]

At the same time, China attaches great importance to fundamentally enhancing development capacities of recipient countries when providing aid for them. China not only gives them the fish, but most importantly, teaches them how to fish so as to help those countries blaze a path of self-dependent development. From 2010 to 2012, China undertook the construction of 580 complete projects, and completed 170 technical cooperation projects in 61 countries and regions related to transportation, communication, electric power, energy, industry, agriculture and education. In recent years, China increased cooperation with developing countries in the field of human resources development by holding training sessions for officials and technical personnel and on-the-job academic education programs in China, and shared with them China’s experience with regard to poverty reduction, development and public administration.

China provides foreign aid mainly in the form of undertaking projects instead of delivering money directly to the recipient countries. China is in charge of the allocation and expenditure of money and the projects are undertaken, constructed and managed by Chinese enterprises, to make sure that the money is made good use of and spent as it should, to enhance the efficiency of the aid projects and to ensure that the money will not be embezzled or pocketed by some greedy and corrupt officials in recipient countries. In fact, even the Associated Press (AP), an American news agency highlighted the advantage of this model. In an article published - on 9 February 2012 and titled: “China skirting African corruption in direct aid”, AP pointed out that “instead of giving cash, the Chinese government prefers to pay Chinese companies to build roads and structures, bypassing local politicians, powerbrokers and construction crews, and to deliver them completed”, adding that, “this model helps defeat the inefficiencies and cash-pocketing corruption associated with other systems of foreign aid delivery”, and “Beijing's efforts to produce turn-key projects are winning fans.” [5] At the same time, since the cost of Chinese personnel, materials and management are lower than those of Western countries, China, compared with Western countries, can achieve more in Africa in terms of development with similar amount of foreign aid.

Nevertheless, to succeed in the long term, China still needs to gradually adjust its foreign aid policy to the new situation whereby China is becoming a more and more global player shouldering increasing responsibilities. Measures can be taken as the following. First, China needs to reduce its tied-aid and open part of its foreign aid market to the international society and especially to the recipient countries. Thus, the recipient countries can participate more in the aid projects so as to create more employment opportunities for the locals and give them new skills. Second, to enhance aid efficiency and effectiveness in the future, China needs to invite more Chinese and African NGOs to participate in the foreign aid. Third, China needs to lower the annual interest rate of concessional loans, and increase grants to the least developed countries. Last but not least, when adhering to the “non-interference” principle, China needs to actively take advantage of foreign aid to help the recipient countries strengthen the building of governance capacity to realize political stability and good governance. If all other developing countries opt for the path of development and good governance, it will contribute to the peace and development of the whole world. Without any doubt, China will benefit a lot from that.

END NOTES

[1] NYU Wagner School, “Understanding Chinese Foreign Aid: A Look at China’s Development Assistance to Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America”, April 25, 2008.

[2] Austin Strange, Bradley Parks, Michael J. Tierney, Andreas Fuchs, Axel Dreher & Vijaya Ramachandran, “China’s Development Finance to Africa: A Media-Based Approach to Data Collection”, Center for Global Development, Working Paper 323, April 2013.

[3] Jonathan Weston, Caitlin Campbell & Katherine Koleski, China’s Foreign Aid Assistance in Review: Implications for the United States, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Updated September 1, 2011, pp.1-14; Michael Klare & Daniel Volman, “America, China & the scramble for Africa’s Oil”, Review of African Political Economy, No.108, 2006, pp.297-309; Thomas J. Christensen, “Shaping China’s Global Choices Through Diplomacy”, testimony before the U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 18, 2008.

[4] Information Office of the State Council of PRC, “China's Foreign Aid (2014)”, July 2014, Beijing.

[5] Rodney Muhumuza, “China skirting African corruption in direct aid”, Associated Press, February 9, 2012.

∗ Luo Jianbo, director and professor of the Center for African Studies, Party School of Central Committee of CPC. His study covers China-Africa relations, African integration, China’s foreign aid. Zhang Xiaomin is associate professor of Beijing Foreign Studies University. His field covers China-Africa relations and China’s foreign aid.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.