China and Western Aid Norms in the Belt and Road

Remy Maduit | Authors published

China and Western Aid Norms in the Belt and Road
Normative Clash or Convergence?
A Case Study on Ethiopia

Esteban, Mario is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid and a Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid, Spain.
SpainOlivié, Iliana is an Associate Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid, Spain.

The rise of China has triggered a massive academic and political discussion on the relationship between this country and prevailing international norms and institutions because of its far-reaching implications. [i] Like other states, China has modified its stance toward international norms and institutions influenced by changes in its domestic and international contexts, moving from deliberate isolation before it enters the United Nations (UN) to rapid integration during the reform era. The academic literature generally presented this process as a reactive integration, depicting China neither as a cooperative rule-maker nor as a belligerent revisionist, but as a rule-taker similar to other countries with a comparable level of socio-economic development. [ii] As Chinese leaders, particularly Xi Jinping, implemented a more proactive and assertive foreign policy, this debate gained in complexity, questioning the extent to which China is cooperating with, complying, shaping, rejecting, or subverting pre-existing international norms. [iii]

Grounded on its massive socioeconomic development, China has become a key development partner for many countries and therefore its stance toward prevailing norms in development cooperation has attracted scrutiny. [iv] This literature has identified three main theoretical frameworks for analyzing this issue. One possibility is accepting the realist assumption that the values of Chinese actors engaged in development cooperation are irreconcilable with those of traditional (Western) donors—donors’ members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). [v] This would lead to a normative clash that predisposes Chinese actors to reject and subvert international aid norms. From this perspective, Chinese stakeholders are expected to regard their values as superior and thus to become increasingly active in promoting them, as they have growing capabilities to do so. Another quite compatible option is to take a rational, pragmatic approach, interpreting that China will comply with the prevailing aid norms only if it is in its interests to do so—for example, to improve its reputation among the traditional donors and their development partners—, but will not actively contribute to their further development as it has no normative attachment to them. This functional standing towards international aid norms may favor efforts by Chinese development actors to introduce minor changes in those norms to better fit their interests. The third option is to resort to a constructivist paradigm to explore whether initial pragmatic acceptance by Chinese actors of the aid norms promoted by their Western counterparts could shift into normative embracement of the values underpinning those norms. This socialization process could develop through the interaction between Chinese stakeholders and development actors from traditional donors. This normative convergence would lead to a cooperative stance towards those norms.

In this work, the authors try to advance this debate on the normative affinities and differences between the development cooperation of China and that of the traditional donors by inspecting the stance of China towards specific aid norms, the principles of the Aid Effectiveness Agenda (AEA), developed by the OECD, and endorsed by DAC donors. These principles are: country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, transparency, and mutual accountability. Perhaps global aid norms such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—developed under the UN framework in the 2030 Agenda—were built with the active participation of both the North and the South. This could apply to the AEA which was joined by China and other developing countries. [vi] But the AEA has originated in the Western world, under the guidance of traditional donors, and a clear North-South pattern of aid relations, as shown, for instance, by its strong liberal footprint and the importance of the principle of democracy in it. [vii] Hence, the AEA is a suitable reference to explore the extent to which there has been a process of socialization of China as an emerging donor into the normative principles that underpin the international development cooperation of the traditional donors. [viii] Taking the AEA as a useful arena to explore normative alignment or confrontation between traditional donors and China and the ideational implications of China’s socialization into Western-led international aid institutions, this article tries to answer two specific questions: What is the stance of China towards the principles of the AEA? Has its attitude and discourse towards the AEA changed because of its interaction with traditional donors?

This article explores these questions through the particular case of a development encounter between China and the community of traditional Western donors in Ethiopia. [ix] This is a privileged space to analyze the three micro-processes linked by the literature to the socialization of China into Western-led norms: mimicking, social influence, and persuasion. [x] The authors have chosen Ethiopia for the case study: an aid ‘darling’ where China has a strong presence in both aid and other fields and in which multiple traditional donors are also present. Ethiopia is also a key space for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi Jinping’s most ambitious foreign policy initiative. As Grimm and Hackenesch note, despite the extended literature on China as a donor—including its attitude towards global norms—, there are fewer studies on the consequences of the interactions between China and the traditional donors in African countries. [xi] Similarly, James Reilly analyses China’s attitude towards the AEA in three South-East Asian countries (Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) and concludes that China ‘is more likely to be influenced by international norms in democratic countries, where international aid agencies are deeply involved and where China has minimal strategic and economic interests’. [xii] The acceptance of Western norms is conditioned by the fact that the partner country and traditional donors might lobby for this and that China has no major interest in the partner country.

Building on that previous literature, on the one hand, this article finds that China’s attitude to the AEA principles is not homogeneous, varying from one principle to another. It also finds that China’s evolving attitude towards some of these principles is more the result of a functional adaptation process than one of socialization into those norms through interaction with the traditional donor community. This adaptation aims to increase the political and economic returns of China’s international cooperation.

This article is structured as follows. The next section addresses the methodological aspects of the research: (i) the rationale for selecting the AEA; (ii) the procedure for this research; and (iii) the features that make the case of Ethiopia, particularly representative. Then, in sections ‘Ownership of development priorities’, ‘Inclusive partnerships”, Transparency and accountability’, and ‘Focus on results’, the authors present the results for each of these AEA principles, before discussing the conclusions in the final section.

Methodology

Orthodoxy and the Aid Effectiveness Agenda

The first conceptual issue to be addressed is the challenging question of how orthodox aid norms can be defined. Norms—including aid norms—are far from uniform, both across countries and regions and across time. [xiii] Given their evolving or even ‘liquid’ nature, it is important to understand Western orthodoxy broadly, including both multilateral policy debates and micro-development encounters in the field. For this case study, the AEA is used as a proxy for orthodox Western norms. [xiv]

In its current shape, the AEA results from a series of meetings and political processes promoted by the OECD. The first high-level forum in Rome in 2003 outlined the main principles of aid effectiveness (alignment with ‘partner countries’ procedures and goals and a focus on the impact and results of development cooperation). This was followed by a landmark second high-level forum, bringing together both donor and partner countries and leading to the 2005 Paris Declaration. The declaration includes a precise definition of five principles that should guide the DAC in securing the development results of international assistance: (i) ownership, with developing countries setting their strategies for poverty reduction, strengthening their institutions, and tackling corruption; (ii) alignment, meaning donor countries align behind these objectives and use local systems; (iii) harmonization, which entails coordination, simplification of procedures, and the sharing of information by donor countries to avoid duplication; (iv) results, whereby developing countries and donors shift the focus towards development results and results get measured; and (v) mutual accountability, which means donors and partners are accountable for development results.

In 2008, a third high-level forum was held in Accra. While at first glance the forum merely seemed to reiterate the aid effectiveness principles of the Paris agreement, the definitions of several principles were modified slightly: ‘It is now the norm for aid recipients to forge their national development strategies with their parliaments and electorates (ownership); that donors support these plans (alignment); and streamline their efforts in-country (harmonization); for development policies to be directed to achieving clear, monitorable goals (managing for development results); and for donors and recipients to be jointly responsible for achieving these goals (mutual accountability)’. [xv] This means ownership has evolved from developing countries merely setting their development strategies to having them forged by their parliaments and electorates. This most recent definition inextricably links ownership to democratic principles.

Finally, the most recent high-level forum was held in Busan in 2011. This forum reaffirmed the spirit of the principles of aid effectiveness (amplified to development effectiveness) and provided a definition based on four principles: (i) ownership of development priorities by developing countries; (ii) focus on results; (iii) inclusive development partnerships; and (iv) transparency and accountability to each other (for more details, see Table 1). The AEA was then institutionalized in the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC), a multi-stakeholder platform integrating both donor and partner countries (including, particularly, Brazil, China, and India) alongside multilateral organizations. [xvi] This arguably marked a new role for traditional donors, gathering under the OECD. [xvii]

Table 1. Development cooperation monitoring framework.

	Focus on results
1b	Countries strengthen their national results frameworks
1a	Development partners use country-led results frameworks
	Ownership of development priorities by developing countries
5a	Development cooperation is predictable: annual predictability
5b	Development cooperation is predictable: medium-term predictability
9a	Quality of countries’ public financial management systems
9b	Development partners use country systems
10	Aid is untied
	Inclusive development partnerships
3	Quality of public-private dialogue
2	Civil society organizations operate within an environment that maximizes their engagement in and contribution to the development
	Transparency and accountability to each other
4	Transparent information on development cooperation is publicly available
7	Mutual accountability among development actors is strengthened through inclusive reviews
6	Development cooperation is included in budgets subject to parliamentary oversight
8	Countries have systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment

Source: Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation

As pointed out by academic literature, after strong momentum (particularly between 2005 and 2011), the AEA has lost traction. This can be because of a series of reasons: (i) widening the group of stakeholders involved (emerging donors, but also the private sector and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs); (ii) shifting from aid effectiveness to development effectiveness; (iii) poor results in AEA progress; (iv) the difficulties in tracking such progress (in both donors and partner countries); (v) the tensions and trade-offs between principles (for instance, between ownership and focus on results); (vi) or, even, the somehow weak relation between means (aid principles) and goals (aid effectiveness). As for the latter, the AEA is more about aid efficiency (how aid is organized) than about effectiveness (the actual goals of aid). [xviii]

Despite these practical limitations, the AEA still encapsulates current thinking regarding aid norms and is, therefore, a valid approach to exploring the attitudes of different global players towards aid orthodoxy. This is shown, for instance, in the importance of ownership, partnerships, or transparency in the current 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. [xix] Since the authors aim to explore China’s attitude towards norms (rather than its real commitment or implementation), the development effectiveness agenda became fuzzier after 2011 and is not an obstacle to this research.

Also, the prevalence of the initial AEA principles in the current principles and indicators shows the strong footprint of Western norms in this agenda, as shown in the very mild evolution of the principles involved from the first to the current version of the agenda. [xx]

Research Procedure

This article used a qualitative approach to explore the research questions outlined above. The authors designed a questionnaire to explore the views of traditional donors, multilateral organizations, Chinese development cooperation representatives, and national authorities regarding the AEA, to gauge cooperation or conflict between Chinese and traditional views of aid norms. The questionnaire is divided into four parts (one for each AEA principle). Each part includes a series of questions to determine (i) the respondent’s view of the initiatives in the partner country (e.g. national or sector development strategies); (ii) the donor’s behavior regarding aid effectiveness principles (e.g. whether this donor publishes information on its aid activities) and/or its response to local initiatives (following the first example, whether the donor aligns with local development strategies); (iii) the respondent’s assessment of this aid effectiveness principle in terms of whether it is implemented and whether it leads to greater aid effectiveness; and (iv) in relevant cases, their opinion on how to improve the implementation of the principle and on how the interaction with Chinese development actors and/or with development actors from the traditional donors have influenced their understanding of the principle.

The authors conducted 36 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with members of the donor community in Ethiopia and China, Chinese and Ethiopian officials, representatives from Chinese business and financing institutions, and Chinese and Ethiopian experts. Three of those interviews were conducted online, while the rest took place in Addis Ababa and Beijing in April, August, and September 2019. The information got from the meetings has been triangulated with data from official documents and secondary literature.

Why Ethiopia?

Exploring a potential clash of ideas between East and West requires a suitable context. This means finding a partner country in which both the traditional development community and China have a strong and varied presence. Aid must also be an important source of external resources to guarantee a strong interaction between locals and donors.

Ethiopia received, on an annual average, slightly over 4.6 billion US dollars in official development assistance (ODA) from different traditional donors in 2017–2019. Ethiopia had an average aid dependency ratio of 5.3 percent (ODA to gross national income) during that same period, well above the average of 0.58 percent for developing countries and even the average of 3 percent for Sub-Saharan Africa. The Ethiopian record of 42.91 US dollars per capita in 2019 is well above that of all developing countries (at 26 US dollars in 2019) and close to the regional average (49.91 US dollars). [xxi] These figures point to a relatively highly dependent partner country.

The traditional donor community for this aid darling is varied. The top ten donors by gross ODA disbursements in millions of US dollars for 2018–2019 include four bilateral donors (the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, and the Netherlands), and six multilateral or intergovernmental organizations or funds (the World Bank, European Union (EU) institutions, the African Development Bank, the Global Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI)). As mentioned above, all norms, including aid norms and, more specifically, the AEA, can be interpreted and implemented in different ways by different stakeholders, even if they all belong to the same traditional donor community. In this sense, it is highly relevant that EU institutions and European states (the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands) are among the top countries and institutions, while others, such as the US and the World Bank, might reflect an American perspective.

The OECD figures also reflect different sector specializations among donors. While the main sectors of intervention for the World Bank are social infrastructure, agriculture, forestry, and fishing, the US specializes in population policies, reproductive health, and humanitarian aid. The UK mainly focuses on social infrastructure (including education, health, and population programs) and humanitarian aid. Finally, the main areas of interest for EU institutions are health, transport and storage, and humanitarian aid. [xxii]

Regarding China’s presence in Ethiopia, this is not limited to development cooperation. The two countries have a variety of ties, including diplomatic relations and investments. Similarities in development approaches and visions may have cemented bilateral relations and shaped Chinese aid in the country. [xxiii] Ethiopia has traditionally approached development strategies with a strong sense of the role of the State in growth processes, very much in line with Asian models, particularly in China. [xxiv] As a result, both countries have historically maintained strategic relations. [xxv] Indeed, as Fantu Cheru has documented, Ethiopia–China relations encompass trade and investment, skills transfers, and experience sharing. Chinese investment in Ethiopia includes foreign direct investment (FDI) projects: in contrast with other African and Latin American countries, Chinese FDI in Ethiopia is focused on manufacturing and the telecommunications sector. China has also provided loans for infrastructure projects in sectors such as transport and power, which have been linked to the BRI.

China does not have a specialized development cooperation office in the field as the Economic and Commercial Counsellor’s Office of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China manages this area in Ethiopia, staffed by officials of the Ministry of Commerce. They invited the office to take part in the coordination meetings of the DAC donors, while they invite the Economic Counsellor to head-of-mission meetings. According to DAC stakeholders, Chinese participation in these forums is sporadic, but Chinese officials also meet bilaterally with members of the donor community in Ethiopia. In these interactions, Chinese participants are much keener on asking about the experiences of the other participants than on sharing their own. There is also a significant presence of Chinese financial institutions, such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, whose representatives are encouraged by their superiors in Beijing to familiarize themselves with the work of Western banks and institutions in Ethiopia. [xxvi]

The exact volume of ODA-like Chinese flows to Ethiopia is unknown, given the donor’s lack of transparency. But available estimates point out significant volumes. According to AidData, which disaggregated Chinese official development assistance (ODA-like) and other official flows (OOF-like), China has allocated 87.7 billion current US dollars for ODA-like activities between 2000 and 2014 across all developing countries. [xxvii] The corresponding figure for Ethiopia, through either national or sub-regional programs, is 3.8 billion US dollars, giving an average of 250 million US dollars per year, just above international assistance from EU institutions and twice as much as from Germany. The same sources estimate that between 2013 and 2017 China loaned 12.1 billion current US dollars to Ethiopia, among which 3.8 billion were likely to be ODA-like. [xxviii] Finally, in terms of sector allocation, according to our interviewees, Chinese flows are focused on transport and storage.

All these features make Ethiopia particularly relevant, filling a gap in academic literature since existing literature on the same issue (outlined in the introduction) has been conducted in partner countries where the presence of Western donors and China is less balanced. Even though the OECD figures estimate the DAC aid dependency ratio of Mozambique and Rwanda to be above Ethiopia, the Chinese presence is scarce in these two African states, according to AidData. Similarly, Chinese development-like funds in Ethiopia are substantially higher than in Laos, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Rwanda, and are like levels in Angola and Cambodia. However, in the latter two cases, DAC aid dependency ratios are significantly lower than in Ethiopia.

Ownership of Development Priorities

Perhaps some principles and indicators are more relevant than others for capturing the normative conflict between the West and the East in the development arena. It is well documented in the academic literature that the principle of ownership and its different interpretations show the gap between Western and Chinese approaches to development. [xxix] As previously mentioned, the AEA approaches ownership from a democratic perspective: aid effectiveness indicators measure the relevance of civil society participation (see indicator 2 in Table 1) and the role of parliaments (indicator 6) in the agenda. However, China’s approach to ownership claims to be characterized by the principles of horizontality between donor and partner governments in the development encounter and of non-interference in domestic affairs, which goes against the political conditionality inherent to the Western aid policy. [xxx] In the words of Hu Jintao: ‘the path of successful development lies in a country’s independent choice of the path and mode of development suited to its national conditions’. [xxxi]

Indicators covering aid predictability and the quality of national management systems well captured the importance of ownership in the eyes of donors. However, it also touches on two questions: whether the partner country has national or sectoral development strategies; and whether donors (either traditional or emerging) will accept such strategies and align with them. Similarly, another indicator of ownership is the extent to which aid is untied. If donors trust the capacities of partner countries to advance their development processes, resources should be, where possible, local (indicator 10 in Table 1).

In the interviews, both Chinese and DAC stakeholders expressed the belief that their cooperation in Ethiopia has substantially different and higher standards of ownership for development priorities than the cooperation implemented by their counterparts. This means the possibilities of normative influence by peer interaction in this area are limited since neither Chinese nor DAC stakeholders believe that there is something to be learned from how the other approaches this issue.

From the Chinese perspective, there is a clear distinction between how the country understands ownership and how this principle is interpreted by DAC actors. For the interviewed Chinese officials, practitioners, and experts, the cornerstone of ownership is that local authorities are in charge of projects implemented in their own countries. They emphasize how China’s experience as a developing country allows Chinese authorities to understand other developing countries that also want to play a leading role in their development. They praise Chinese-supported South-South Cooperation for being horizontal and respecting the preferences of the political authorities involved. [xxxii]

In contrast, Chinese stakeholders often denounce Western cooperation in limiting the capacity of the host country authorities to make sovereign decisions on the projects implemented by Western-led institutions in their countries. [xxxiii] As one interviewee explains, ‘unlike Western countries, China does not impose its solutions on others, but helps them to implement their solutions’. [xxxiv]

Chinese stakeholders base this criticism on two arguments. The first stresses Western paternalism and presents Western cooperation as well-intentioned but hindered by Western prejudices and a sense of superiority over the local population and officials. Under this perspective, they criticized Western cooperation for treating local officials like ‘children’, ‘little brothers’, and ‘students’, to the extent of trying to impose their criteria over the development priorities of local authorities. [xxxv] This narrative presents Western cooperation as patronizing and insensitive since it believes it understands the needs and conditions on the ground better than local authorities and must play a leading role in planning projects, leaving only a secondary role for domestic officials. This point was echoed by Ethiopian stakeholders and African United Nations officers and diplomats posted in Ethiopia who complained that ‘the West treats us like infants’. [xxxvi]

The second argument is even harsher on Western cooperation, depicting it as a tool leveraged by Western powers to make developing countries bend to their interests. This narrative presents Western cooperation as an instrument for meddling in the domestic politics of developing countries, conditioning cooperation on implementing public policies favored by Western countries but not by local authorities. [xxxvii]

Western international development cooperation practitioners in Ethiopia not only reject these allegations but claim their cooperation programs give local authorities more ownership than projects financed by China, leaving no room for the adoption of Chinese perspectives on ownership. When analyzing Chinese narratives on the ownership of Chinese-financed projects by local Ethiopian authorities, Western practitioners on the ground make several controversial points. [xxxviii] First, relations between China and Ethiopia are not as horizontal as the Chinese side claims, since the huge gap in the size and level of development of both economies makes bilateral cooperation much more important for Ethiopia than for China. Ethiopian officials, even those who criticize Western cooperation for being more paternalistic than its Chinese counterpart, also acknowledged this asymmetry. Second, they tied a significant share of Chinese aid and financing to the use of products and services offered by Chinese companies. This condition imposes limitations on the decision-making capacity of the Ethiopian authorities, reducing their ownership of Chinese-backed projects. This point is also consistently echoed by the Ethiopian officials involved in managing Chinese development projects. Third, some voices inside the traditional donor community even accuse the Chinese idea of ownership of being superficial and self-serving, arguing that the only reason for insisting on the autonomy of the host country is to exonerate China from any responsibility if projects do not achieve the expected results or to increase the perception of a debt of gratitude to China if the project is successful. Ethiopian stakeholders reject this as they take for granted that the final responsibility for the results of the projects lies in the Ethiopian authorities.

Turning to their cooperation, most DAC actors reject the claim that political conditionality and stress guide their cooperation in Ethiopia and that their projects are demand-driven. Western aid and financing have been highly significant, even under previous authoritarian governments, with the traditional donor community acknowledging their development agenda. The traditional donor community claims it gives Ethiopians more ownership than its Chinese counterparts, citing four points. First, they provide untied aid and financing, which allows Ethiopian counterparts to run transparent and competitive tenders to decide on companies that will be involved in projects.

Second, the EU and certain European states, United Nations agencies such as UNICEF, and some multilateral banks like the World Bank provide contributions to support budgets in sectors such as health and education. This form of cooperation gives host governments much more control over decision-making than cooperation based on individual projects. The EU finances 50 percent of the health budget of Ethiopia. EU officials believe this has played a key role in improving health services in Ethiopia, allowing coordination across civil engineering, medical supplies, and medical staff. In contrast, some officials from DAC countries have labeled Chinese-financed hospitals such as the Tirunesh-Beijing General Hospital and the privately funded Addis Silk Road General Hospital as ‘white elephants’, arguing that they are underused because of poor integration into the Ethiopian health system. [xxxix]

Third, not only do many DAC stakeholders seek to give the host government as much ownership as permitted by local conditions (as illustrated by the aforementioned examples of fiscal support), but they also invest in capacity-building to allow local authorities to take more ownership of their cooperation. Different cooperation agencies from DAC members and United Nations agencies have personnel who work closely with local officials in different ministries of the Ethiopian Government and part of their remit is to build the Ethiopian Administration’s capacity to manage cooperation programs more autonomously. [xl] Conversely, some Chinese and Ethiopian actors argue that this cooperation activity allows traditional donors to exert greater influence.

Fourth, members of the traditional donor community have a less centralized and more inclusive understanding of ownership. Although both Chinese and DAC stakeholders maintain that Ethiopian authorities enjoy high ownership, concentrated at the highest levels of the Administration and in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, they perceive it in different ways. Chinese stakeholders are more comfortable with this pyramidal conception of ownership, concentrated at the top, and complain that the Government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali is favoring decentralization and giving a bigger role to other actors, such as the parliament, social organizations, and local communities. Ali’s approach is more in line with the inclusive and horizontal conception of ownership favored by DAC stakeholders, which is also reflected in their positive evaluation of the current government and their understanding of inclusive partnerships.

All this means that the normative influence of Western donors on Chinese development actors is highly limited for ownership since both sides regard their understanding of this concept as superior to the others. Chinese stakeholders believe Western cooperation is stained by political conditionality, while their Western counterparts question China’s tied aid and pride themselves on giving as much ownership to the host government as the local conditions allow, building local capacity to take more ownership of cooperation and fostering a more inclusive understanding of ownership.

Inclusive Partnerships

Non-state actors have played a much more significant role in the economic development of Western countries than in China, and these different domestic development experiences have led to different stances in inclusive partnerships. The interviews conducted suggest that Chinese stakeholders lack a normative attachment to engaging with Ethiopian civil society and are less aware than their Western counterparts of the importance of engaging with local communities to ensure the successful design, implementation, and evaluation of projects. Chinese stakeholders express a growing instrumental interest in engaging with local communities in Ethiopia, citing material constraints and lack of experience—as opposed to normative contradictions—as the main barrier to doing so.

There was a strong consensus on how the diplomats and development cooperation officials from DAC members and the World Bank that were interviewed understand inclusive partnership, in line with the definition of the OECD Development Centre. [xli] They emphasized both the normative value of engaging with Ethiopian civil society and its positive effect on the development impact of their projects in the country. Indeed, part of their activities in Ethiopia strengthens civil society and improves the environment in which social organizations operate. [xlii] Interviewees also consistently praised the Ali Administration for creating more political space for civil society than its predecessors.

These traditional donors are aware of potential contradictions in the preferences of the political authorities and local communities. To address this, they establish direct communication channels with both government and civil society stakeholders and do not implement projects claiming to clash with the will of the local communities or receive negative social impact studies. For example, with the support of the Ethiopian Government, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been promoting rice crops as a more efficient substitute for teff in certain parts of Ethiopia. However, regardless of the potential benefits of introducing rice in these areas or the desires of the authorities, JICA only implements the project after conducting feasibility studies and confirming the support of local communities. [xliii]

Chinese stakeholders favor a state-to-state approach, mirroring their own domestic experience, where a strong state still plays a leading role in guiding the development of the economy. [xliv] This inclination has a strong presence in Ethiopia, with former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his successor Hailemariam Dessalegn using China as an economic model. [xlv] In this context, Chinese stakeholders in Ethiopia saw neither normative nor practical value in conducting thorough social risk analyses for their projects in Ethiopia, since they assumed that the host government could impose its priorities on the local population. [xlvi] This meant that they did not establish significant relations with Ethiopian NGOs and that it centralized the local input in their projects on the Ethio-China Development Cooperation Directorate of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation and high-level political dialogues.

This is not to deny that there is a growing awareness among Chinese stakeholders of the pragmatic benefits of direct engagement with Ethiopian civil society at the political and practical levels. This change has been driven by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali giving more voice to civil society than his predecessors and the curbing of Chinese investment in the Lamu coal plant in neighboring Kenya, despite this project being endorsed by the Kenyan government, because of the mobilization of local communities and NGOs. [xlvii] A normative change produced by their interaction with the traditional donor community does not motivate this show, but by instrumental reasons.

Chinese stakeholders recognize the difficulties they face in engaging constructively with Ethiopian civil society because of their lack of experience in this area and human resources since China does not have resident development cooperation experts in Ethiopia and only has a few development workers or volunteers on the ground. Chinese stakeholders hope to mitigate these limitations—at least partially—by developing the China International Development Cooperation Agency, which could eventually post personnel to Ethiopia. Chinese NGOs, whose presence in Ethiopia is growing, are also expected to serve as a bridge between the Chinese Government and local communities. [xlviii] In terms of the latter, the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation became the first Chinese NGO to open an office in Addis Ababa in September 2019. [xlix]

In short, for the principle of inclusive partnership, the authors found no evidence of China changing its attitude to aid norms because it coexisted with traditional donors. The engagement of China as a donor with local stakeholders (other than local authorities) may have increased because of its experience in cooperation activities.

Transparency and Accountability

Traditional donors in Ethiopia show a significantly higher normative attachment to transparency and accountability and give these principles much more credit for making development cooperation more effective compared with their Chinese counterparts. They regard transparency as a constituent part of democracy and essential for accountability. Not that Chinese development stakeholders challenge the DAC consensus on transparency from a normative perspective. They do so from an instrumental perspective, sacrificing transparency for the sake of political and business interests. Hence, it is only natural that cooperation from DAC members with Ethiopia is much more transparent and accountable than Chinese cooperation. Chinese officials also limit the information Ethiopian officials can release on bilateral cooperation between the two countries. China’s presence in Ethiopia has not changed the behavior of traditional donors regarding transparency and accountability, nor have Chinese stakeholders been significantly influenced in this area by their interaction with traditional donors.

While there are considerable differences in the quantity and quality of the information provided by traditional donors on projects in Ethiopia, they are much more transparent about their activities than in China. [l] This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce ranks last in the Aid Transparency Index. [li] The officials that were interviewed from traditional donors in Ethiopia systematically expressed a much stronger belief in the role transparency plays in improving the quality of development cooperation than their Chinese counterparts, who maintain that transparency does not help—or hardly helps—to improve aid quality. This is not to deny the interest among Chinese development actors in improving their monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to reduce mismanagement and corruption linked to Chinese cooperation projects. However, it reveals a desire among Chinese actors involved in development cooperation to prevent information from being released to outsiders. [lii]

Traditional donors publish up-to-date, detailed, and disaggregated information on their activities in Ethiopia, and some even present critical analyses of their experience on the ground. [liii] In contrast, Chinese institutions only provide disjointed and superficial information about their cooperation with Ethiopia. The website of the Economic and Commercial Counsellor’s Office, which coordinates Chinese economic cooperation with the country, is the main source of information on China–Ethiopia cooperation. Between 16 April 2007 to 26 February 2020, only 71 news articles were published on the site, 28 of which disclosed information on Chinese cooperation with Ethiopia. All this information was disjointed and propagandistic in style. It should be noted that 49 of these news articles were published after May 2019, which shows a greater attempt to provide an impression of transparency.

DAC members enter information on their cooperation activities in the Aid Management Platform Database, where it is checked and complemented by Ethiopian officials, who then send it back to the donors to be checked before publication. There is a strong consensus among the interviewed representatives of the main traditional donors in Ethiopia regarding the challenge of transparency for local authorities. Representatives complained that, despite the situation improving under the current government, Ethiopian authorities are more interested in employing divide-and-rule with donors than in coordinating between them. [liv] Interviews with Ethiopian officials reinforced this impression since they believed that controlling information strengthens their bargaining position and that transparency does not have a significant effect on increasing aid effectiveness. Officials from different traditional donors reported different strategies for tackling this issue, such as imposing high transparency standards on the projects they finance, publishing detailed information on projects even when this is controversial among counterparts and merely adhering to the minimum transparency requirements of the DAC to avoid alienating their Ethiopian counterparts.

The Economic and Commercial Counsellor’s Office sends information on Chinese cooperation in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa to officials at the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, who oversee uploading it to the country’s digital platform. This information is comprehensive, providing a wide range of details on all cooperation projects financed by Chinese institutions, including the amount of financing, conditions, and project objectives. Officials at the ministry confirmed the information is of high-quality, equivalent to that provided by traditional donors. However, they also noted that the Ethiopian government frequently delayed it and was subject to restrictions on publication. [lv] Ethiopian officials do not feel alienated by this request, since they believe that having more information than the donor gives them more leverage during negotiations and that avoiding overlaps between projects is the responsibility of Ethiopia, not the donors. Although Chinese stakeholders in Ethiopia feel pressure from traditional donors to be more transparent about their activities, they are not willing to release country-specific, let alone project-specific, information. [lvi] They are worried about how that data could be used by Western countries to censure China, by Chinese public opinion to criticize their government, and by developing countries to ask for more Chinese support. [lvii]

Chinese officials posted in Ethiopia argued that increasing the transparency of Chinese aid would not increase its effectiveness or the standing of China, as traditional donors would complain that Chinese aid flows are not high enough. [lviii] They were also concerned that the Chinese public would criticize its government for committing too many resources to international development cooperation instead of improving the conditions of the most disadvantaged groups at home. [lix] Domestic resistance to foreign assistance increases as the domestic economic situation deteriorates. Chinese officials also believe that the lack of transparency gives them a stronger negotiating hand with host governments, warning that more transparent Chinese development cooperation could trigger a rush of assistance requests to China. Neither Chinese development actors in Ethiopia nor their Western counterparts expect China’s development assistance to adopt the transparency and accountability standards of traditional donors soon. In the words of one employee of the China Development Bank posted to Ethiopia: ‘silence is the best defense when you cannot properly explain what you are doing’. [lx]

From this perspective, the reluctance of Chinese officials to form part of a mutual accountability mechanism is only natural. Despite being invited, they do not take part in the Development Assistance Group meetings held regularly in Addis Ababa to coordinate the activities of its members in Ethiopia. Other key mechanisms for exchanging information and avoiding overlap include bilateral meetings, frequent in the donor community in Ethiopia. Although Chinese officials request bilateral meetings with their DAC counterparts to exchange views on their activities in Ethiopia, their attitude is marked by a desire to learn about other donors’ activities and a reluctance to share information on their own. [lxi]

Focus on Results

Traditional donors in Ethiopia have country-specific strategic documents that define their development cooperation priorities in the country. These targets are often part of a larger political approach that includes the exertion of soft power. [lxii] However, Chinese cooperation lacks country-specific strategic publications that may allow aid monitoring from a focus on results perspective. Implicitly, the Chinese approach is supposed to be based on mutual benefit and is thus also explicitly expected to benefit China. [lxiii] Chinese stakeholders in different fields have underlined different benefits related to their area of expertise. Diplomats focus on political benefits, such as support for Chinese initiatives and candidacies in international organizations; business representatives emphasize profits for Chinese companies that win contracts or invest in Ethiopia; and officials from Chinese financing institutions highlight the benefits received through loan repayments, as well as business opportunities. The prioritization of these interests of development results, together with the emphasis on respecting the sovereignty of partner states, means that Chinese cooperation places all responsibility for the development impact of its projects on the authorities of partner countries. Under this framework of cooperation among equals, China’s duty is limited to adequately complying with the agreed projects, an approach that frequently leads to sustainability problems. [lxiv]

Most officials from Western and multilateral organizations recognize the development spillover of many Chinese loans and investments. Many of the Chinese and Ethiopian stakeholders interviewed in this research argued that the development potential of Chinese projects in Ethiopia is even higher than projects financed by traditional donors. Ethiopian officials consistently expressed the belief that their country should bear the blame for deficiencies in Chinese-funded projects. In the interviews, they explained how Chinese institutions have advised improving projects presented by the Ethiopian side, such as the Addis–Djibouti railway, the Addis Ababa Light Rail, and several sugar factories. Most of the issues related to these projects could have been prevented if the Ethiopian side had taken the Chinese advice on board.

Even if Chinese cooperation lacks country-specific documents of development strategies and, therefore, its projects do not explicitly align with the development plans of the Ethiopian Government, Chinese and Ethiopian authorities share a development outlook based on high investment ratios to develop infrastructure with the potential to deliver sustained productivity growth. They argue that, unlike traditional donors, Chinese cooperation favors economic structural transformation, which they regard as key to socio-economic development. [lxv] Ethiopian officials welcome the development aid provided by traditional donors and recognize its value for alleviating poverty and providing basic services, such as health and education. However, they complain that ‘this cooperation is just for survival’ and will not make Ethiopia a prosperous country. Conversely, they argue that, even if Chinese aid is minimal, at only around 10 million US dollars per year, ‘China will transform Ethiopia’, as it finances productive projects that can break structural bottlenecks and unleash local economic potential (Table 2). [lxvi] Relevant examples include the first industrial park in Ethiopia (the Eastern Industrial Zone), the Addis–Djibouti railway, the country’s first highway (the Addis–Adama express highway), the Addis Ababa Light Rail scheme, the deployment of a 4 G network in the capital, the construction of a high-voltage power line for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the Adama I and II wind farm projects (generating 51 MW and 153 MW, respectively) and the 300 MW Tekeze hydro project.

Table 2. China’s financing in Ethiopia: 2013–2018 (commitments in millions of US dollars)

	2013/2014	2014/2015	2015/2016	2016/2017	2017/2018
Government of China	23.96				84.28
Exim-Bank of China (concessional)	758.58		1,299.89	1,470.97	167
China Development Bank	580		30
Exim-Bank of China (non-concessional)	500			38.26	171.22
Industrial and Construction Bank of China			550
ZTE	28.49
Huawei	34.04
China Electric Power		74.81	74.49
Bank of China				18.29
Government loans	782.54	0	1,299.89	0	0
Public and private loans	1,925.07	74.81	1,954.38	0	171.22

Source: Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia, Annual Public Sector Debt Portfolio Report for the Year 2017/18 No.19, p.25; and Annual Public Sector Debt Portfolio Analysis for the year 2018/19 No.20, p.21.

Besides loans, Chinese financial cooperation has also taken the form of FDI. According to an official at the Ethiopian Investment Commission, Chinese investment in the country increased steadily between 2012 and 2017, when it peaked at 800 million US dollars (equivalent to 20 percent of FDI inflows that year), before falling back to 600 million US dollars in 2018. [lxvii] Three-quarters of Chinese FDI in Ethiopia is concentrated in the manufacturing sector, with the rest mainly destined for construction and hospitality, in line with the development plans of the Ethiopian Government.

Chinese actors realize the benefits of placing greater emphasis on the development return of their projects to ensure their long-term success. Key stakeholders interviewed for this study noted that failure to do so will mean that China will continue to suffer from financial and reputational losses caused by the transformation of commercial loans into concessional loans and the inappropriate operation of Chinese-financed projects. [lxviii] There is no evidence, however, that this changing attitude results from a normative embracement of this principle through interaction with the traditional donor community.

In this context, Chinese cooperation is paying increasing attention to capacity-building, as shown by regular technical cooperation between the China Development Bank and the Development Bank of Ethiopia under the China-Africa Financial Cooperation Consortium and the participation of thousands of Ethiopians in Chinese-sponsored training programs. [lxix] Chinese cooperation in Ethiopia also appears to be shifting the balance from commercial loans to concessional loans and grants to finance its most recent projects in the country, such as the Ethiopia–Djibouti natural gas pipeline and the Addis Ababa Riverside Development Project. [lxx]

In terms of the traditional donor community, exposure to Chinese cooperation has not resulted in a reduction in the focus on the results of projects, since traditional donors partially link the sustainability problems of many Chinese projects to their limited focus on development results.

Conclusion

The stance of Chinese development institutions towards aid norms in Ethiopia differs depending on the norm. With ownership and transparency, China’s attitude has not changed. A state-centered definition of ownership is deeply embedded in the country’s external action, particularly in its ties with the Global South. This contrasts with the Western approach to international cooperation, which aims to involve all development stakeholders. In terms of transparency, there is a strong rationale for avoiding the increased disclosure of information by Chinese authorities, particularly given the difficulty of justifying large-scale development investment abroad given China’s domestic needs back home. On these two issues, there is a clear normative clash between Western and Chinese cooperation where all DAC stakeholders interviewed in Ethiopia concorded in pointing to these normative discrepancies as significant obstacles to the materialization of the enormous development potential of China’s ties to this country.

However, for inclusive partnership and the focus on results, China’s attitude towards these two principles is approaching that of the traditional donors. Unlike what has been observed for Chinese cooperation in Cambodia and Laos, this trend is not the result of a socialization process through interaction with them, but a pragmatic move based on the lessons learned by Chinese stakeholders from their increasing experience in development activities in Ethiopia. [lxxi] Chinese actors are exploring ways of engaging with Ethiopian society and improving the developmental results of their projects in Ethiopia to increase the returns of those projects for Chinese diplomacy and Chinese companies operating in the country. It is still to be seen whether this functional adaptation may translate in the future into normative embracement of the principles of inclusive development partnerships and focus on results as understood by the AEA principles.

Finally, although the aim of this research was not to assess whether Chinese aid practices have influenced Western donors’ behavior, the topic arose during some interviews. DAC officials recognize some positive influences of Chinese practices, such as increased awareness of the need to speed up implementing projects and support the structural transformation of the Ethiopian economy. This is an issue worthy of further analysis in future studies.

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[i] For example, power-transition theory points to whether the rising power has a revisionist agenda as one of the two key factors to predict a hegemonic war. See G. John Ikenberry, ‘The rise of China and the future of the West—Can the liberal system survive’, Foreign Affairs 87, (2008), p. 23; Joshua Shifrinson, ‘The rise of China, the balance of power theory and US national security: reasons for optimism?’, Journal of Strategic Studies 43(2), (2020), pp. 175–216; Steve Chan, Weixing Hu and Kai He, ‘Discerning states’ revisionist and status-quo orientations: Comparing China and the US’, European Journal of International Relations 25(2), (2019), pp. 613–640.

[ii] Ann Kent, Beyond Compliance: China, International Organizations and Global Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Alastair Johnston, Social states: China in international institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Gerald Chan, China’s Compliance in Global Affairs Trade, Arms Control, Environmental Protection, Human Rights (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co, 2006); Gregory Chin and Ramesh Thakur, ‘Will China Change the Rules of Global Order?’, The Washington Quarterly 33(4), (2010), pp. 119–138; Katherine Combes, ‘Between Revisionism and Status Quo: China in International Regimes. China’s behaviour in the global trade, non-proliferation and environmental regimes’, POLIS 6(1), (2011), pp. 1–37; Pitman Potter, ‘China and the International Legal System: Challenges of Participation’, The China Quarterly 191, (2007), pp. 699–715; Samuel Kim, ‘China in World Politics’, in Does China Matter? A reassessment, ed. Barry Buzan and Rosemary Foot (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 37–54; Zonglai Wang and Bin Hu, ‘China’s Reform and Opening-up and International Law’, Chinese Journal of International Law, 9(1), (2010), pp. 193–203.

[iii] Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China’s rise and international regimes: Does China seek to overthrow global norms?’, in China in the era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and foreign policy challenges, ed. Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), pp. 165–195; Chris Alden and Daniel Large, ‘On becoming a norms maker: Chinese foreign policy, norms evolution and the challenges of security in Africa’, The China Quarterly 221, (2015), p. 123; Lina Benabdallah, ‘Contesting the international order by integrating it: The case of China’s Belt and Road initiative’, Third World Quarterly 40(1), (2019), pp. 92–108; Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter, ‘Global Norms and Major State Behaviour: The Cases of China and the United States’, European Journal of International Relations 19(2), (2011), pp. 329–352; Xinyuan Dai and Duu Renn, ‘China and International Order: The Limits of Integration’, Journal of Chinese Political Science 21(2), (2016), pp. 177–197.

[iv] Agatha Kratz and Dragan Pavlićević, ‘Norm-making, norm-taking or norm-shifting? A case study of Sino–Japanese competition in the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail project’, Third World Quarterly 40(6), (2019), pp. 1107–1126; Heiner Janus and Lixia Tang, ‘Conceptualising ideational convergence of China and OECD donors: Coalition magnets in development cooperation’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda, ed. Sachin Chaturvedi, Heiner Janus, Stephan Klingebiel, Xiaoyun Li, André de Mello e Souza, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos and Dorothea Wehrmann (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021), pp. 217–243; Hisahiro Kondoh, ‘Convergence of Aid Models in Emerging Donors? Learning Processes, Norms and Identities, and Recipients’, JICA-RI Working Paper 106, (2015), pp. 1–58; James Reilly, ‘A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), pp. 71–91.

[v] DAC membership mainly comprises Western donors. Japan was the only non-Western country among the DAC eight original members, and remained the only non-Western donor until the adhesion of the Republic of Korea in 2010. See OECD, ‘DAC dates at glance’, in DAC in Dates: The History of OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, OECD (Paris: OECD Publications, 2006), p. 37, and OECD, ‘Joining the Development Assistance Committee (DAC)’, Accessed May 16, 2021, https://www.oecd.org/dac/dac-global-relations/joining-the-development-assistance-committee.htm.

[vi] OECD, ‘Endorsements to the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)’, Accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/countriesterritoriesandendorsementstotheparisdeclarationandaaa.htm.

[vii] Mario Esteban and Aitor Pérez, ‘Chinese financing of Latin American development: Competition or complementarity with traditional donors?’, in Reconfiguration of the Global South: Africa, Latin America and the Asian Century, ed. Eckart Woertz (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 217–236.

[viii] Although traditional donors are not a monolithic entity, they share a basic understanding of the normative principles of the AEA that could be contrasted with the understanding of emerging donors like China.

[ix] Jing Gu, Chuanhong Zhang, Alcides Vaz and Langton Mukwereza, ‘Chinese state capitalism? Rethinking the role of the state and business in Chinese development cooperation in Africa’, World Development 81, (2016), pp. 24–34.

[x] Alastair Johnston, Social states: China in international institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

[xi] See Sven Grimm and Christine Hackenesch, ‘China in Africa: What challenges for a reforming European Union development policy? Illustrations from country cases’, Development Policy Review 35(4), (2017), pp. 549–566. It should be noted that these studies on Western donors’ and China’s interactions around aid focused on exploring the extent to which the irruption of China as a leading donor has altered Western donors behaviour (and not the other way round); see Christine Hackenesch, ‘It’s domestic politics, stupid! EU democracy promotion strategies meet African dominant party regimes’, World Development 75(11), (2015), pp. 85–96.

[xii] James Reilly, ‘A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), p. 78.

[xiii] Nilima Gulrajani and Liam Swiss, ‘Donorship in a State of Flux’, in Aid Power and Politics, eds. Iliana Olivié and Aitor Pérez (Oxford: Routledge, 2020), pp. 199–222; Emma Mawdsley, ‘The “Southernisation” of development?’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 59(2), (2018), pp. 173–185.

[xiv] Stephen Brown, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Aid Effectiveness Norm’, The European Journal of Development Research, preprint, (2020); Grimm and Hackenesch, ‘China in Africa: What challenges for a reforming European Union development policy? Illustrations from country cases’; Mawdsley, ‘The “Southernisation” of development?’; Reilly ‘A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’; Niels Keijzer and David Black, ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review, 38(1), (2020), p. 1–12.

[xv] See OECD, ‘The High Level Fora on Aid Effectiveness: A history’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/thehighlevelforaonaideffectivenessahistory.htm.

[xvi] Talaat Abdel-Malek, The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation: Origins, Actions and Future Prospects (Bonn: German Development Institute, 2015). For more details on the governance of the GPEDC, see GPEDC, ‘Development Effectiveness and the 2030 Agenda’, accessed August 6, 2020, http://effectivecooperation.org/about/leadership/.

[xvii] Niels Keijzer and David Black, ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review, 38(1), (2020), pp. 1–12; Stephen Brown, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Aid Effectiveness Norm’, The European Journal of Development Research 32, (2020), pp. 1230–1248.

[xviii] Artan Karini, ‘Coordination Without Effectiveness? A Critique of the Paris Agenda in the Experience of Development Aid in Albania’, European Journal of Development Research 28(4), (2015), pp. 741–757; Masumi Owa, ‘Is OECD DAC’s aid effectiveness agenda based on evidence?’, Journal of Development Effectiveness 7(4), (2015), pp. 435–444; Molly Sundberg, ‘Donors dealing with “aid effectiveness” inconsistencies: national staff in foreign aid agencies in Tanzania’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 13(3), (2019), pp. 445–464; Niels Keijzer and David Black, ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review 38(1), (2020), pp. 1–12; Niels Keijzer, Stephan Klingebiel and Fabian Scholtes, ‘Promoting ownership in a “post‐aid effectiveness” world: Evidence from Rwanda and Liberia’, Development Policy Review 38(1), (2020), pp. 32–49; Sarah Holzapfel, ‘Boosting or Hindering Aid Effectiveness? An Assessment of Systems for Measuring Donor Agency Results”, Public Administration and Development 36(1), (2016), pp. 3–19; Stephen Brown, ‘Foreign Aid and National Ownership in Mali and Ghana’, Forum for Development Studies 44(3), (2017), pp. 335–356.

[xix] Niels Keijzer and David Black, ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review 38(1), (2020), pp. 1–12.

[xx] Jorge Gutiérrez-Goiria, Natalia Millán-Acevedo and Ignacio Martínez-Martínez (2017), ‘Dentro o más allá de la ayuda: el difícil camino de la Coherencia de Políticas para el Desarrollo’, Iberoamerican Journal of Development Studies, 6 (1), (2017), pp. 26–49; Niels Keijzer and David Black, ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review 38(1), (2020), pp. 1–12; Stephen Brown, ‘Foreign Aid and National Ownership in Mali and Ghana’, Forum for Development Studies 44(3), (2017), pp. 335–356.

[xxi] World Bank, ‘Net ODA perceived (%of GNI)’, Accessed May 16, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locations=ET-ZF-XO; World Bank, ‘Net ODA perceived per capita (current US$), Accessed May 16, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.PC.ZS?locations=ET-ZF-XO.

[xxii] For more information on DAC members ODA for Ethiopia, see OECD, ‘Aid at glance chart by recipient’, accessed May 15, 2021

[xxiii] Aaron Tesfaye, China in Ethiopia: The Long Term Perspective (New York: State University of New York Press, 2020).

[xxiv] Elsje Fourie, ‘China’s example for Mele’s Ethiopia: When development “models” land’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 53(3), (2015), pp. 289–316; Jason Mosley and Elizabeth E. Watson, ‘Frontier transformations: development visions, spaces and processes in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 10(3), (2016), pp. 452–475.

[xxv] See Deborah Bräutigam and Xiaoyang Tang, ‘“Going Global in Groups”: Structural Transformation and China’s Special Economic Zones Overseas’, World Development 63, (2014), pp. 78–91; Fantu Cheru, ‘Emerging Southern powers and new forms of South–South cooperation: Ethiopia’s strategic engagement with China and India’, Third World Quarterly 37(4), (2016), pp. 592–610; Gashaw Ayferam Endaylalu, ‘China in Africa: A partner or patron, Ethiopia in focus’, International Journal of African and Asian Studies 46, (2018), pp. 14–20; Françoise Nicolas, ‘Chinese Investors in Ethiopia: The Perfect Match?’ Notes de l’Ifri, 2017; Jean-Pierre Cabestan, ‘China and Ethiopia: Authoritarian affinities and economic cooperation’, China Perspectives 4, (2012), pp. 53–62; Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang, Going beyond aid: development cooperation for structural transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Philip Giannecchini and Ian Taylor, ‘The eastern industrial zone in Ethiopia: Catalyst for development?’, Geoforum 88, (2018), pp. 28–35; Seifudein Adem, ‘China in Ethiopia: Diplomacy and Economics of Sino-optimism’, African Studies Review 55(1), (2012), pp. 143–160.

[xxvi] Interview in Addis Ababa with senior staff of Chinese banking institutions, 10 April 2019

[xxvii] In line with this, a recent publication seeks to distinguish between aid flows and less concessional financing in Africa, concluding that, while aid flows are driven by foreign policy considerations, other financing follows strictly economic interests. Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Brad Parks, Austin M. Strange and Michael J. Tierney ‘Apples and Dragon Fruits: The Determinants of Aid and Other Forms of State Financing from China to Africa’, International Studies Quarterly 62(1), (2018), pp. 182–194. According to the interviews, this dichotomy of Chinese drivers may have caused tensions between Chinese stakeholders in Ethiopia (between officials and representatives of Chinese companies).

[xxviii] Only taking into account flows from the Government of China and Exim-Bank of China under concessional terms. This amount is roughly similar to previously mentioned AidData figures, although the reporting period is shorter (2013–2018 instead of 2000–2014). However, comparing a similar period, 2009–2014–the most recent available–, AidData ODA-like figures would amount to 3.5 billion current US dollars, close to the 3.8 billion reported by Ethiopian authorities. Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Brad Parks, Austin M. Strange and Michael J. Tierney, ‘Aid, China, and Growth: Evidence from a New Global Development Finance Dataset’, AidData Working Paper 46, (2017). This translates the fact that Chinese ODA has only expanded significantly since 2007–2008. See Naohiro Kitano, ‘China’s foreign aid: Entering a new stage’, Asia-Pacific Review 25(1), (2018), p. 101.

[xxix] See Laurence Chandy and Homi Kharas, ‘Why can’t we all just get along? The practical limits to international development cooperation’, Journal of International Development 25(5), (2011), pp. 739–751; Marcia Don Harpaz, ‘China’s Coherence in International Economic Governance’, Journal of Chinese Political Science 21(2), (2016), pp. 123–147; Gulrajani and Swiss, ‘Donorship in a State of Flux’; Ailan Liu and Bo Tang, ‘US and China aid to Africa: Impact on the donor–recipient trade relation’, China Economic Review 48(C), (2018), pp. 46–65; Mawdsley, ‘The “Southernisation” of development?’; Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr. and Henrik Hartmann, ‘Mutual Delegitimization: American and Chinese Development Assistance in Africa’, The SAIS Review of International Affairs, (2018); James Reilly, ‘A norm-taker or a norm-maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), pp. 71–91.

[xxx] On the Chinese understanding of conditionality see Mikael Mattlin and Matti Nojonen, ‘Conditionality and path dependence in Chinese lending’, Journal of Contemporary China 24(94), (2015), pp. 701–720

[xxxi] James Reilly, ‘A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary China 21(73), (2012), p. 74.

[xxxii] South Centre, ‘South–South Cooperation Principles: An Essential Element in South-South Cooperation’, November 2009, https://www.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/South-South-cooperation-Principles_EN.pdf.

[xxxiii] Regilme and Hartmann, ‘Mutual Delegitimization: American and Chinese Development Assistance in Africa’.

[xxxiv] Interview with Chinese experts on international development cooperation, Beijing, 28 August 2019.

[xxxv] Interviews with Chinese officials and personnel of Chinese financing institutions based in Ethiopia in April 2019.

[xxxvi] Interviews at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, Addis Ababa, April 10–11, 2019.

[xxxvii] For more on this debate on donor interests versus partners’ needs and merits, see Iliana Olivié and Aitor Pérez, Aid Power and Politics (Oxford: Routledge, 2020).

[xxxviii] This information was extracted from interviews conducted with officials from the US, the EU, Japan, Spain, the UK and the World Bank based in Ethiopia in April and May 2019.

[xxxix] Embassy of The People’s Republic of China in The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, ‘Remarks by Amb. Tan Jian at the Handover Ceremony of China-Aid Tirunesh-Beijing General Hospital Phase II Project’, last modified August 27, 2018, http://et.china-embassy.org/eng/zagx/t1589233.htm; Tirunesh Beijing Hospital, ‘About us’, accessed August 6, 2020, http://www.tbghospital.com/pages/aboutus.php; Jennifer Bouey, ‘Implications of U.S.–China Collaborations on Global Health Issues’, CT-516, testimony presented before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission on 31 July 2019; Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, ‘Chinese-invested silk road hospital boosts health care delivery in Ethiopia’, last modified November 6, 2019, https://www.focac.org/eng/zfgx_4/rwjl/t1713609.htm; Silk Road General Hospital, ‘About us’, accessed August 6, 2020, http://www.silkroadhospitaladdis.com/aboutus. Interviews in Addis Ababa, April 9 and 16, 2019.

[xl] Interviews with officials from the traditional donor community and Ethiopian officials, Addis Ababa, 10 April 2011 and 16, 2019.

[xli] Thirteen diplomats and officials from the EU, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US were interviewed in Addis Ababa in April 2019. For the OECD Development Centre definition, see Brenda Killen, ‘Inclusive partnerships for effective development co-operation’, in Development Co-operation Report 2015: Making Partnerships Effective Coalitions for Action (Paris: OECD, 2015), pp. 51–57.

[xlii] See UK Department for International Development, ‘Citizen Engagement and Democracy Support Programme: Project GB-1-205135ʹ, last modified July 23, 2020, https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-205135; USAID, ‘Democracy, Human Rights and Governance’, last modified July 20, 2020, https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/democracy-human-rights-and-governance; USAID, ‘Foreign Aid by Country: Ethiopia’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ETH?fiscal_year=2019&measure=Obligations; US Department of State, ‘Integrated Country Startegy: Ethiopia’, August 2018, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/AF_ICS_Ethiopia_UNCLASS_508.pdf; USAID, ‘USAID Forward: Building Capacity of Local Organizations (2012–2016), last modified July 20, 2020, https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/work-with-us/usaid-forward-grants-local-organizations. USAID recorded 4.7 million US dollars of financing commitments for ‘Democratic participation and civil society’ in Ethiopia for 2019. See USAID, ‘Foreign Aid by Country: Ethiopia’.

[xliii] Japan International Cooperation Agency, ‘JICA and MoANR Push for Stronger Rice Promotion in Ethiopia’, last modified March 26, 2018, https://www.jica.go.jp/ethiopia/english/office/topics/180326.html.

[xliv] The central role of the state in the economy has led Sarah Eaton to characterize the Chinese economy as a guided economy, while Zheng Yongnian and Huang Yanjie define China’s political economy as ‘economic statism’ and a ‘market in state’ system. See Sarah Eaton, The Advance of the state in contemporary China: state-market relations in the reform era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 31–35; Yongnian Zheng and Yanjie Huang. Market in State: The Political Economy of Domination in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

[xlv] Cabestan, ‘China and Ethiopia: Authoritarian affinities and economic cooperation’, pp. 53–62; Fourie, ‘China’s example for Mele’s Ethiopia: When development “models” land’, pp. 289–316.

[xlvi] Interviews with Chinese officials from the Ministry of Commerce and China Development Bank in Addis Ababa on April 9 and 11, 2019.

[xlvii] Abdi Latif Dahir, ‘China’s plan to help build Kenya’s first coal plant has been stopped—for now’, Quartz Africa, June 27, 2019, https://qz.com/africa/1653947/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/.

[xlviii] Meeting at the Chinese Center for International Knowledge on Development, Beijing, August 2019

[xlix] Mei Ming, ‘Chinese anti-poverty foundation opens office in Ethiopia’, September 19, 2019, accessed August 6, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-09/19/c_138405219.htm.

[l] See UK Department for International Development, ‘Ethiopia. Summary’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/countries/ET; European Commission, ‘Ethiopia’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/where-we-work/ethiopia_en; Japan International Cooperation Agency, ‘Activities in Ethiopia’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://www.jica.go.jp/ethiopia/english/activities/index.html; World Bank, ‘Projects in Ethiopia. Project List’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/projects-list?lang=en&searchTerm=&countrycode_exact=ET; World Bank, ‘The World Bank in Ethiopia. Overview’, accessed August 6, 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ethiopia/overview.

[li] For more information on the Aid Transparency Index, see https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/the-index/.

[lii] Interviews in Addis Ababa and Beijing, April and August 2019.

[liii] This is reflected in the monitoring and evaluation of projects by traditional donors. An evaluation published by USAID in 2017 highlighted several issues with the organized training, including the number of attendants (below the stated targets), the lack of practical or substantive content, and the lack of coordination and inclusion of local stakeholders. See USAID, Evaluation Report. Mid-Term Performance Evaluation of the Human Rights Protection Support Activity (Addis Ababa: United States Agency for International Development, 2017), pp. 28–29. Other USAID evaluations are available through the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse. An evaluation by the Japan International Cooperation Agency details an irrigation project beset by the lack of development of a planned database, cost overruns, low efficiency, and city-level specificities not considered during the planning phase. See Japan International Cooperation Agency, ‘Internal Ex-Post Evaluation for Technical Cooperation Project’, October 2018, https://www2.jica.go.jp/en/evaluation/pdf/2017_0800811_4_f.pdf. The UK Department for International Development and JICA have commissioned several external reports, including one by Mayumi Hamada, which finds limited implementation of the regional disaster-risk management strategies, and mixed results on decreasing drought damage and maintenance and facilities activity issues. See Mayumi Hamada, ‘Ex-Post Evaluation of Technical Cooperation for Development Planning “Rural Resilience Enhancement Project”’, 2018,
Finally, a report on humanitarian funding in Ethiopia highlights the lack of contributions to building resilience, besides the late disbursement of the contingency-fund assistance. See Lewis Sida, Simon Levine, Bill Gray, and Courtenay Cabot Venton, Multi-year humanitarian funding in Ethiopia (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2019), pp. 1, 26; 2, 30.

[liv] A similar result was found in a previous study on aid coordination in Morocco. See Iliana Olivié and Aitor Pérez, ‘Why don’t donor countries coordinate their aid? A case study of European donors in Morocco’, Progress in Development Studies 16(1), (2016), pp. 52–64.

[lv] Interview at the MOFEC, 16 April 2019.

[lvi] This demand for greater transparency is well-known among the Chinese development cooperation community and the China International Development Cooperation Agency has expressed its desire to address criticisms of the lack of transparency associated with Chinese aid. See ‘CIDCA issues Measures for the Administration of Foreign Aid draft’, China Aid Blog, last modified November 20, 2018, http://china-aid-blog.com/2018/11/20/cidca-issues-measures-for-the-administration-of-foreign-aid-draft/.

[lvii] This explanation for the lack of transparency of Chinese cooperation favours political reasons over the institutional reasons emphasized in some of the literature. See Caitlyn Sears, ‘What Counts as Foreign Aid: Dilemmas and Ways Forward in Measuring China’s Overseas Development Flows’, The Professional Geographer 71(1), (2018), p. 138. This implies the establishment of the China International Development Cooperation Agency could only result in minor improvements in the transparency of Chinese development cooperation. See Dan Banik, ‘Coordinating Chinese Aid in a Globalized World’, Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, January 6, 2019, https://carnegietsinghua.org/2019/01/06/coordinating-chinese-aid-in-globalized-world-pub-78058; Rudyak, Marina, ‘The Ins and Outs of China’s International Development Agency’, Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, September 2, 2019, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/02/ins-and-outs-of-china-s-international-development-agency-pub-79739.

[lviii] It is estimated that between 2001 and 2014, the volume of Chinese aid has ranked between seventeenth and ninth in the world. See Naohiro Kitano, ‘China’s foreign aid: Entering a new stage’, Asia-Pacific Review 25(1), (2018), pp. 90–111.

[lix] This is consistent with the arguments made by Zhiming and Smyth and contradicts the idea that the lack of transparency of China’s international development cooperation is the reason why Chinese people do not support it. Cheng Zhiming and Russell Smyth, ‘Why give it away when you need it yourself? Understanding public support for foreign aid in China’, The Journal of Development Studies 52(1), (2016), pp. 53–71; Chao Zhang, ‘Why Is the Chinese Public So Hostile Toward Development Assistance?’ The Diplomat, September 13, 2018.

[lx] Interview, Addis Ababa, 10 April 2019.

[lxi] Interviews with members of the traditional donor community in Ethiopia, April and May 2019.

[lxii] See UK Department for International Development, ‘DFID Ethiopia: Country profile 2018ʹ, July, 2018, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/913353/Ethiopia-Profile.pdf; European Commission, ‘National Indicative Programme for Ethiopia 2014 to 2020ʹ, June 19, 2014, https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/system/files/nip-ethiopia-20140619_en.pdf; Embassy of Japan in Ethiopia, ‘Rolling Plan for the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’, April 2019, https://www.et.emb-japan.go.jp/comp_forms/Rollingpercent20Planpercent20forpercent20thepercent20Federalpercent20Democraticpercent20Republicpercent20ofpercent20Ethiopia.pdf; USAID, ‘Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS). Ethiopia. 2019–2024ʹ, December 2019, https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/Ethiopia-CDCS_2019-2024_Final-Public-Dec-2019-2.pdf.

[lxiii] Enlai Zhou, ‘The Chinese Government’s Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries’, Wilson Center History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, January 15, 1964, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121560.pdf?v=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998 ecf8427e.

[lxiv] Xiaoyun Li, Dan Banik and Jin Wu, ‘Difference or Indifference: China’s Development Assistance Unpacked’, IDS Bulletin 45(4), (2014), pp 22–35.

[lxv] Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang. Going Beyond Aid: Development Cooperation for Structural Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[lxvi] Interview in Addis Ababa, 16 April 2019.

[lxvii] Interview in Addis Ababa, 8 April 2019.

[lxviii] Interviews in Addis Ababa, April 10 and 16, 2019. For examples of refinancing of Chinese projects in Ethiopia see: Abdur Rahman Alfa Shaban, ‘China extends repayment of Ethiopia railway loan to 30 years—PM’, Africa News, July 7, 2018, https://www.africanews.com/2018/09/07/china-extends-repayment-of-ethiopia-railway-loan-to-30-years-pm/. On its severe operating problems, see: BBC News, ‘Letter from Africa: “I gave up on catching the train in Ethiopia”’, September 9, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49580863.

[lxix] Shumin Liao, ‘CDB Unveils China-Africa Financial Cooperation Consortium’, Yicai Global, September 6, 2018, https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/cdb-unveils-china-africa-financial-cooperation-consortium; Xiang Bo, ‘Prospective train drivers from Ethiopia, Djibouti attend China-sponsored training program’, New China, July 11, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-07/11/c_137316274.htm.

[lxx] According to an interview with Chinese officials (Addis Ababa, 16 April 2019), a third of the gas pipeline will be financed by interest-free loans and the remainder by concessional loans. On the second project see ‘Ethiopia launches China-backed riverside green development project’, Economic and Commercial Office of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, October 19, 2019, http://et2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/chinanews/201910/20191002905734.shtml.

[lxxi] Reilly, ‘A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia’, p. 90.

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