Latest news with #AidData
Japan Times
23-04-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
China unlikely to fill void left by U.S. aid pullback, data shows
Charities and developing nations are grappling with funding shortfalls in public health programs after U.S. President Donald Trump slashed U.S. foreign aid commitments. But those hoping that China might step in to fill the gap are likely to be disappointed, as exclusive data analyzing its foreign aid commitments of the last two decades show. For one, China's total grant and loan commitments of $9.76 billion in the decade up to 2022 are less than the $12 billion that the U.S. spent on global health projects in 2024 alone, according to data provided by William & Mary's AidData research lab. And while the U.S. largely gave to public health programs organized by nonprofits or multilateral organizations, China's aid is dominated by bilateral loans and donations directly to individual governments. "China is very strategic in the way that it uses its lending and assistance dollars, even in the health space,' said Samantha Custer, AidData's director of policy analysis. "There's either reputational, strategic or geopolitical benefits.' Beijing often ties access to assistance to backing China's preferred policy positions, she added. A 2024 study found that support for China on human rights issues was "significantly related' to medical assistance from Beijing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, one of the main guiding principles since China first started providing foreign aid in the 1960s was "mutual benefit' by which it never regarded assistance as unilateral. One reason it will be difficult for Chinese money to fill the funding void is that the U.S. and China provide health assistance in very different ways. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) prioritized public health issues such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and family planning, providing grants to nonprofits and the private sector or multilateral organizations like the Global Fund or Gavi. The majority of U.S. financing came from the Department of State and USAID. Most of those initiatives have now been terminated or put on hold after Trump in January ordered a pause to all U.S. foreign aid, with some exceptions, arguing that it's not aligned with American interests. Those hoping that China might step in to fill the gap left by the U.S. are likely to be disappointed. | REUTERS Beijing, meanwhile, prefers direct bilateral assistance. China's health-related foreign aid has come in fits and starts and disclosure has been spotty at best, a far cry from the systemic and sophisticated approach spearheaded by the U.S., according to Wenhui Mao, assistant director of programs at Duke Global Health Innovation Center. It is dominated by lending and loan guarantees extended to governments, mainly focused on building infrastructure. China's largest health-aid project was a $850 million loan to Cuba over several years for the construction and renovation of hospitals. Although China is unlikely to fill the gap, Karen A. Grepin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health, said Beijing is likely to "take advantage of the situation to establish itself as a more important donor and powerful agent in this space.' Besides the building of infrastructure, China now also has a deep reserve of its own public-health experience it can share, from training of personnel to capacity development and skills around the monitoring of and responding to infectious diseases, Grepin said. China has shifted its funding priorities in recent years, data shows, from infrastructure to other projects including combating infectious diseases — especially after the outbreaks of SARS and Ebola. China has also drawn upon its efforts in eradicating malaria to help other countries battle the mosquito-borne infection. Between 2000 and 2021, the country provided $319 million to 36 sub-Saharan African countries through hundreds of projects. China first began providing global health assistance in the 1960s when it dispatched medical teams to Africa. While its aid to the continent continues to this day, China has shifted more of its attention over the decades to Asian countries and members of its Belt and Road Initiative. During COVID-19, China provided health assistance to more than 120 BRI countries by donating 2 billion vaccines, and has vowed to train 1,300 health workers in traditional Chinese medicine over the next few years. The sudden U.S. withdrawal from much of the global public-health sphere has offered China a unique opportunity to improve its soft power. "China doesn't even need to do anything and it already has gained a narrative advantage,' said Custer "The sidebar is that it is a much more reliable and attractive partner than the U.S.' While China will likely keep expanding its international influence in public health, it also faces challenges that could hamper its ability to be an outright leader in the sector — from domestic issues, such as the slowing economy, to geopolitical uncertainties posed by its increasingly fraught relationship with the United States. Further complicating matters is that — unlike other major international donors — it doesn't report its overseas financing to the platforms that track countries' foreign aid, such as Creditor Reporting System, the primary database for global aid flows. "What the U.S. has been doing is not simply about money, but also building up a network that is so precious that it can't be measured in numbers,' said Mao. "No one in the world, including China, can fill the gap.'
New York Times
04-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump's Threatened Tariff on Buyers of Venezuelan Oil Could Squeeze China
President Trump's threatened tariffs on countries that buy oil from Venezuela are another example of how his trade moves could hit China the hardest even when China is not named as the target. Mr. Trump announced the 25 percent 'secondary tariffs' last week, portraying them as aimed at the authoritarian government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and at the country's Tren de Aragua gang. The Venezuelan-related tariffs could still be imposed on top of the very steep tariffs that Mr. Trump declared on Wednesday, which bring his new tariffs on Chinese goods to 54 percent. The biggest buyer of Venezuela's oil is China — and China is the country least able to stop buying oil from Venezuela. Venezuela owes about $10 billion to China's state-run banks, according to AidData, a research institute at William and Mary, a university in Williamsburg, Va., that compiles information about Chinese development financing. China's banks need their loans to Venezuela to be repaid. They already face heavy losses on real estate lending at home. On Monday, China's Ministry of Finance said it would sell about $70 billion worth of bonds to shore up the country's four largest commercial banks. But after more than a decade of economic mismanagement, Venezuela has almost no legal exports except oil to raise the money it needs to keep paying its debts to China. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gutting aid, US cedes soft power game to China
When President Donald Trump froze nearly all US foreign aid, Cambodia was forced to suspend workers removing dangerous mines from the country -- until China stepped in with the necessary funding. In the Cook Islands, traditionally bound to New Zealand and friendly with the United States, the prime minister has announced plans to head to Beijing to sign a cooperation deal. Successive US administrations have vowed to wage a global competition with China, described as the only potential rival for global leadership. But as seen in Cambodia and the Cook Islands, two small but strategic countries, the United States has effectively ceded one of its main levers of influence. The dramatic shift by Trump -- following the advice of billionaire advisor Elon Musk -- has put nearly the entire workforce on leave at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), marking the end of a key decades-old effort by the United States to exercise "soft power" -- the ability of a country to persuade others through its attractiveness. Trump has unapologetically turned instead to hard power, wielding tariffs against friends and foes and threatening military force to get his way, even against NATO ally Denmark over Greenland. When John F. Kennedy created USAID, he pointed to the success of the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe and hoped that alleviating poverty would reduce the allure of the Soviet Union, the main adversary of the United States at the time. Michael Schiffer, who served as USAID's assistant administrator for Asia under former president Joe Biden, warned that China could become the dominant player in the developing world in areas from public health to policing. "We'll be sitting on the sidelines and then in a couple of years we'll have a conversation about how we're shocked that the PRC has positioned itself as the partner of choice in Latin America, Africa and Asia," he said, referring to the People's Republic of China. "At that point, the game will be over." - Will China step up? - The United States has long been the top donor in the world, giving $64 billion in 2023. A number of other Western countries, especially in Scandinavia, have been more generous compared with the sizes of their economies. But Schiffer doubted they could replace the United States either in dollar terms or in the longstanding US role of mobilizing international aid to priorities around the world. China's aid is more opaque. According to AidData, a research group at the College of William and Mary, China has provided $1.34 trillion over two decades -- but unlike Western nations, it has mostly provided loans rather than grants. Samantha Custer, director of policy analysis at AidData, doubted there would be any "huge, dramatic increase in aid dollars from China," noting Beijing's focus on lending and the economic headwinds facing the Asian power. Still, she said, the United States will struggle to counter perceptions it is no longer reliable. "China can win the day by not even doing anything," she said. "You can't partner with somebody who's not there." Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said China is more interested in construction and benefiting its domestic industries, like building a hospital rather than training its doctors. And with the freeze in USAID, China may have even less reason to step up aid. "If they become the only game in town, it doesn't generate strong incentives for China to compete and significantly increase development assistance," he said. One major gap will be conflict-related funding, said Rebecca Wolfe, an expert in development and political violence at the University of Chicago. She pointed to Syria, where the Islamic State extremist group gained grounds in areas that lacked governance. "Yes, the Chinese can come in and do the infrastructure. But what about the governance part?" She said Western countries may not step up until they feel real effects, such as a new migrant crisis. - Different soft power? - Trump's aid freeze is officially only a 90-day review, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that he issued waivers for emergency assistance. But aid groups say effects are already being felt by the sweeping pause, from schools shutting down in Uganda to flood relief shelters under threat in South Sudan. Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, a scholar of soft power, said Trump has a highly transactional worldview and is more attuned to hard power. But Ohnesorge, managing director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bonn, said Trump also represented a new, post-liberal sort of soft power in a polarized world. He noted that other leaders have styled themselves after Trump and gladly followed his lead. For instance, Argentina's libertarian president, Javier Milei, swiftly joined Trump in leaving the World Health Organization. "Perhaps it may henceforth be better to even speak of US soft powers -- in the plural -- as there are starkly different visions of America and the world prevalent in the US today," Ohnesorge said. sct/jgc
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gutting aid, US cedes soft power game to China
When President Donald Trump froze nearly all US foreign aid, Cambodia was forced to suspend workers removing dangerous mines from the country -- until China stepped in with the necessary funding. In the Cook Islands, traditionally bound to New Zealand and friendly with the United States, the prime minister has announced plans to head to Beijing to sign a cooperation deal. Successive US administrations have vowed to wage a global competition with China, described as the only potential rival for global leadership. But as seen in Cambodia and the Cook Islands, two small but strategic countries, the United States has effectively ceded one of its main levers of influence. The dramatic shift by Trump -- following the advice of billionaire advisor Elon Musk -- has put nearly the entire workforce on leave at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), marking the end of a key decades-old effort by the United States to exercise "soft power" -- the ability of a country to persuade others through its attractiveness. Trump has unapologetically turned instead to hard power, wielding tariffs against friends and foes and threatening military force to get his way, even against NATO ally Denmark over Greenland. When John F. Kennedy created USAID, he pointed to the success of the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe and hoped that alleviating poverty would reduce the allure of the Soviet Union, the main adversary of the United States at the time. Michael Schiffer, who served as USAID's assistant administrator for Asia under former president Joe Biden, warned that China could become the dominant player in the developing world in areas from public health to policing. "We'll be sitting on the sidelines and then in a couple of years we'll have a conversation about how we're shocked that the PRC has positioned itself as the partner of choice in Latin America, Africa and Asia," he said, referring to the People's Republic of China. "At that point, the game will be over." - Will China step up? - The United States has long been the top donor in the world, giving $64 billion in 2023. A number of other Western countries, especially in Scandinavia, have been more generous compared with the sizes of their economies. But Schiffer doubted they could replace the United States either in dollar terms or in the longstanding US role of mobilizing international aid to priorities around the world. China's aid is more opaque. According to AidData, a research group at the College of William and Mary, China has provided $1.34 trillion over two decades -- but unlike Western nations, it has mostly provided loans rather than grants. Samantha Custer, director of policy analysis at AidData, doubted there would be any "huge, dramatic increase in aid dollars from China," noting Beijing's focus on lending and the economic headwinds facing the Asian power. Still, she said, the United States will struggle to counter perceptions it is no longer reliable. "China can win the day by not even doing anything," she said. "You can't partner with somebody who's not there." Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said China is more interested in construction and benefiting its domestic industries, like building a hospital rather than training its doctors. And with the freeze in USAID, China may have even less reason to step up aid. "If they become the only game in town, it doesn't generate strong incentives for China to compete and significantly increase development assistance," he said. One major gap will be conflict-related funding, said Rebecca Wolfe, an expert in development and political violence at the University of Chicago. She pointed to Syria, where the Islamic State extremist group gained grounds in areas that lacked governance. "Yes, the Chinese can come in and do the infrastructure. But what about the governance part?" She said Western countries may not step up until they feel real effects, such as a new migrant crisis. - Different soft power? - Trump's aid freeze is officially only a 90-day review, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that he issued waivers for emergency assistance. But aid groups say effects are already being felt by the sweeping pause, from schools shutting down in Uganda to flood relief shelters under threat in South Sudan. Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, a scholar of soft power, said Trump has a highly transactional worldview and is more attuned to hard power. But Ohnesorge, managing director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bonn, said Trump also represented a new, post-liberal sort of soft power in a polarized world. He noted that other leaders have styled themselves after Trump and gladly followed his lead. For instance, Argentina's libertarian president, Javier Milei, swiftly joined Trump in leaving the World Health Organization. "Perhaps it may henceforth be better to even speak of US soft powers -- in the plural -- as there are starkly different visions of America and the world prevalent in the US today," Ohnesorge said. sct/jgc
