Back to the Future? Charting Features of the Not-So-New Convergence in Aidland

Abstract

During the last decade, the liberal paradigm, hegemonic in development assistance from the 1980 and well into the 2000s, has seen a fracturing. Rather than an impasse or outright conflict between 'aid with Chinese characteristics' and that of traditional donors, we might now be witnessing an evolving convergence. Through a concise review of China's aid -its modalities, motives, substance, underlying conceptions of development, and morals -I extrapolate the following key features across the Chinese approach: Collateralization of development finance; neo-mercantilism; a preference for aid to tangibles; a deep-seated 'growthmentality'; and a non-moralizing politics. I then take these features as referents for charting possible convergence in a case study of recent shifts in the development assistance of Norwaya hitherto ardent advocate for liberalist thinking and practices in aidland. In ways of thinking and acting, there seem to be some clear commonalities emerging.Convergence around said referents may owe much to the fact that these are not so novelthey exhume much of that which is associated with the modernization paradigm, which traditional donors now seem to re-discover as both feasible and desirable templates for aid.

Pivot to the South: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through China's Belt and Road Initiative

“…For Murray and Overton (2016), this process is related to China's global influence, but should predominantly be understood as a renewal of post‐war liberal modernisation principles. For Pahle (2021), there has likewise been evidence of ‘evolving convergence’ between Chinese and Norwegian development across conceptions, modalities and motives within a similar context of post‐war modernisation theory revival (Pahle, 2021, p. 21).…”

“…The rise of China, in particular, has been positioned as a challenge to the Northern ancien regime (Pahle, 2021, p. 30) because it has, arguably, brought its own ‘development model’ to the global development system. Indeed, whilst the existence and definition of a ‘China model’ is likewise a subject of lively debate (Li et al., 2009; Ramo, 2004; Tang, 2020; Zhao, 2010), since the late 1990s scholars have evaluated various Chinese development norms, modes, frameworks and economic policies to inform a contemporary, yet continuously evolving, understanding of a divergent Chinese development model.…”

“…However, as China's ontological and material status in global development has grown (Mawdsley, 2017), scholars have also explored potential convergence, as opposed to solely divergence, between various features of the Chinese and dominant development models including in relation to development finance, institutions, norms, modalities and frameworks (Carbone, 2013;Curtis, 2013;Esteban & Olivié, 2022;Kragelund, 2015;Kratz & Pavlićević, 2019;Li & Carey, 2014;Mawdsley, 2017;McEwan & Mawdsley, 2012;Murray & Overton, 2016;Pahle, 2021;Reilly, 2012).…”