This paper aims to estimate China's net foreign aid from 2001 to 2013 as compared with net official development assistance (ODA) figures, which the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) customarily uses. First, a practical definition to capture China's foreign aid activities as a proxy for China's ODA was proposed. Second, both net and gross disbursements of China's foreign aid were estimated. Third, the results were compared with DAC members' ODA; China's donor ranking has moved up from 16th in 2001 to 6th in 2012 and 2013. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

By estimating China's foreign aid as a proxy for China's bilateral Official Development Assistance and by analyzing its implementation structure and policy, this paper sheds some light on China's foreign aid activities, which have been at a transitional stage. Based on our estimates, the level of foreign aid in terms of net disbursement has increased sharply since 2004, reaching around US$7.1 billion in 2013. Some measures to strengthen the implementation structure to deal with this expansion have been introduced by the central government; however, this transition process needs more time. To facilitate this process, China is attempting to absorb knowhow on development assistance from multilateral institutions and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee countries that are eager to share their knowledge, with the expectation that China will eventually play a major role in international development.

No abstract

This article presents updated estimates of China's foreign aid between 2001 and 2014 as a proxy for China's official development assistance (ODA) as defined by the OECD-DAC, and to compare this with the ODA of other DAC members.

No abstract