The study and database by the Washington-based Center for Global Development and AidData, a research project, includes 1,673 Chinese development finance projects worth $75 billion in 50 African countries from the years 2000-2011.
The Chinese figures, using standard measures of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Other Official Finance (OOF), are roughly on par with US aid to Africa during the same period, the Center for Global Development said.
While official ODA from Western countries and some major developing countries is openly reported and easily tabulated, Chinese aid has been much more difficult to track, said creators of the database, http://.
china.aiddata.org.
“China treats its aid activities as a state secret and this is an attempt to uncover what’s going on,” said Andreas Fuchs, an economics professor at Heidelberg University in Germany and a visiting researcher at Princeton University.
“This topic arouses very strong reactions, positive and negative, and people are very polarized in their strong opinions,” added Brad Parks, executive director of AidData and a researcher at the College of William and Mary.
Among the accusations leveled at China are that its aid to Africa is chiefly aimed at exploiting natural resources; it unconditionally supports undemocratic and corrupt regimes; and it undermines good governance, debt relief and environmental policies promoted by traditional Western donors.
China rejects these assertions, which have been put forward by some African and Western aid experts and officials. Scholarly research has challenged some of the criticisms, but Beijing’s secrecy on the issue keeps suspicions festering.
