China’s Foreign Aid Political Drivers: Lessons from a Novel Dataset of Mask Diplomacy in Latin America during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study investigates a novel dataset comprised of a universe of 537 donations in 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, between 11 February and 20 June 2020, which provides a high level of detail on China’s and Taiwan’s mask diplomacy. We describe who the main donors were, who the main recipients were, what was donated to each country, and which variables explain why some countries received more aid than others. Drawing on previous literature, the article advances understanding about the political determinants of these donations. Our findings revealed that, although seemingly uncoordinated, donations made by China’s central government, Chinese companies, cities, and foundations were strongly affected by two political determinants, namely the recipient’s partnership status with China and the One China Policy. Furthermore, aid provided by China’s Central Government was larger in autocracies than in democracies.

Who sends me face masks? Evidence for the impacts of COVID‐19 on international trade in medical goods

“…The studies closest to this paper are Fuchs et al (2020) and Telias and Urdinez (2020). Both investigate exports of medical products from China and shed light on the roles of political and economic ties with foreign countries.…”

Geopolitics and Geoeconomics in the China–Latin American Relations in the Context of the US–China Trade War and the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The first two manuscripts (Jenkins, 2022; Pu and Myers, 2022) provide a snapshot of the scope of the BRI in Latin America and the geopolitical competition between China and the United States in the region. Then, the four manuscripts that follow delve into the effects of the trade war (Dussel Peters, 2022; Gachúz Maya, 2022), the mask diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic (Telias and Urdinez, 2022), and the recent trends in Chinese overseas finance in renewable energy (Gélvez Rubio and González, 2022).…”

“…The following manuscript by Telias and Urdinez (2022) analyses a novel dataset comprised of a universe of 537 donations in thirty-three countries in LAC, between 11 February and 20 June 2020, during the outbreak of the pandemic. The authors suggest that the outbreak of COVID-19 offered a unique opportunity to understand the political drivers of China's foreign aid.…”

The COVID-19 Pandemic and European Trade Flows: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel Model

“…The first academic studies analysing the economic effects of the pandemic in most cases used global computable general equilibrium models (Maliszewska et al, 2020;Baldwin and Tomiura, 2020;McKibbin and Fernando, 2020;Orlik et al, 2020;OECD, 2020;WTO, 2020). Some subsequent papers looked at individual countries such as Kenya (Socrates, 2020), Switzerland and Spain, in the latter two cases the Covid-19 containment measures being found to lead to sharp falls in trade (Buchel et al, 2020;De Lucio et al, 2020, andMinondo, 2021); concerning China, Che et al (2020) analysed total export flows, whilst Fuchs et al (2020) and Telias and Urdinez (2020) reported a fall in the exports of medical goods and Friedt and Zang (2020) in the supply of machinery parts; finally, Meier and Pinto (2020) found that US industries with a large exposure to intermediate goods imports from China experienced a sharp fall in both exports and imports.…”