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White Paper on Peaceful Development
Special> White Paper on Peaceful Development
UPDATED: May 19, 2011 NO. 18 MAY 5, 2011
China's Foreign Aid
State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, April 2011, Beijing
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Public Facilities

Public facilities built with aid from China in other developing countries mainly include municipal utilities, civilian buildings, wells for water supply, conference centers, sports venues, culture venues, and facilities for scientific, educational and medical care purposes. By the end of 2009, China had helped other developing countries build 687 public facilities of various kinds. The major ones include the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall in Sri Lanka, the Friendship Hall in Sudan, the National Theater of Ghana, the Cairo International Convention and Exhibition Center in Egypt, the Radio and Television Broadcast Center in Comoros, the International Convention Center in Myanmar, the Moi International Sports Center in Kenya, the Multi-Functional Sports Stadium in Fiji and the Tanzania National Stadium. They have all become centers for social, political and cultural activities as well as landmark buildings. Some public welfare facilities, including the Capital Water Supply Project in Nouakchott, Mauritania, the Well-Drilling Project in Cambodia, the Water Supply Project in Chalinze, Tanzania and the Water Supply Project in Zinder, Niger, low-cost housing projects in Angola and Surinam, have played an active role in improving the living conditions of local poor people.

Education

The Chinese Government always attaches great importance to aid in education for other developing countries. Most China's foreign aid for education is spent in building schools, providing teaching equipment and materials, dispatching teachers, training teachers and interns from other developing countries and offering government scholarships to students from other developing countries to study in China.

In the 1950s, China began to provide financial support to students from other developing countries coming to China to study, and aid Asian and African countries to build their own colleges and technical schools, providing them with teaching instruments and laboratory equipment. Since the 1960s, China has dispatched Chinese teachers to other developing countries. In the 1970s and 1980s, at the request of some countries, China began to train middle- and high-level technicians and managerial personnel from these countries, who would work for complete projects undertaken with Chinese aid, including the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, the Friendship Port in Mauritania, a coal mine in Tanzania and a textile factory in Guyana. In recent years, China has strengthened its aid for education in other developing countries, helping them build nearly 100 rural primary schools, increasing government scholarships and the number of teachers who come to receive training in China, dispatching more Chinese teachers abroad to help build up the weak academic disciplines, and enhancing cooperation with other developing countries in vocational, technical education and distance education. Educational aid from China has helped recipient countries train a large number of qualified personnel in the fields of education, management, and science and technology, and rendered intellectual support for their social and economic development.

By the end of 2009, China had helped other developing countries build more than 130 schools, and funded 70,627 students from 119 developing countries to study in China. In 2009 alone, it extended scholarships to 11,185 foreign students who study in China. Furthermore, China has dispatched nearly 10,000 Chinese teachers to other developing countries, and trained more than 10,000 principals and teachers for them.

Medicine and Public Health

Medical aid plays an important role in China's foreign aid. It mainly covers building hospitals and medical care centers, and establishing malaria prevention and treatment centers; dispatching medical teams; training medical workers; and providing medicines and other medical materials. By the end of 2009, China had aided other developing countries to build more than 100 hospitals and medical care centers, and provided them with a large amount of medical equipment and medicines. At present, over 30 hospitals are under construction with the help of China.

Many hospitals built with aid from China, such as the Ta'izz Revolution Comprehensive Hospital in Yemen, and hospitals in the Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, Chad and Laos, have contributed much to solving local people's difficulties in getting medical service. In recent years, China has strengthened exchanges and cooperation with developing countries, especially African countries, in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases like AIDS and malaria, and in the research and application of traditional medicines. China has also trained a large number of medical workers for other developing countries. In the last three years, China has built 30 malaria prevention and treatment centers in African countries, and provided artemisinin anti-malaria medicines worth 190 million yuan. China's aid has made a positive contribution to the development of medical undertakings, improvement of the medical care infrastructure and advance of medical treatment technologies in the recipient countries.

Clean Energy and Coping With Climate Change

China was one of the first countries which have developed clean energy sources such as bio-gas and small hydropower stations. Thus, it has advantages in this regard when it comes to foreign aid. At the beginning of its foreign aid efforts, China helped developing countries in Asia and Africa in utilizing local water resources to build small and medium-sized hydropower stations and projects of power transmission to meet the needs for electricity by local people as well as by agricultural and industrial production. In the 1980s, by working with relevant agencies of the United Nations, China imparted bio-gas technologies to many developing countries. Meanwhile, China passed on bio-gas technologies to Guyana and Uganda by way of bilateral aid. China's efforts achieved the expected results and helped the recipient countries reduce their dependence on imported fuels.

China has steadily increased aid in coping with climate change. In recent years, as the problem of global warming has been getting worse, China has expanded the scope of relevant aid to other countries. China has carried out cooperation with Tunisia, Guinea, Vanuatu and Cuba in utilizing bio-gas, assisted in the building of hydropower stations in Cameroon, Burundi and Guinea, and cooperated with Mongolia, Lebanon, Morocco and Papua New Guinea in exploring solar energy and building wind-power stations. In addition, China has held training courses on clean energy sources and climate change for other developing countries. From 2000 to 2009, China held 50 training workshops attended by more than 1,400 people from other developing countries on the development and use of renewable resources such as bio-gas, solar energy, and small hydropower stations, as well as forestry management, and desertification treatment and prevention.

V. Management of Foreign Aid

The decision-making power in China regarding foreign aid lies with the Central Government. Ever since the 1950s, with the development of foreign relations and foreign aid, agencies at various levels of the Chinese Government responsible for the management of foreign aid have been gradually established and improved, and management of projects has been gradually strengthened.

The Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China is the administrative department authorized by the State Council to oversee foreign aid. It is responsible for the formulation of foreign aid policies, regulations, overall and annual plans, examination and approval of foreign aid projects and management of the project execution. The Executive Bureau of International Economic Cooperation, China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges, and Academy of International Business Officials affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce are entrusted with tasks of managing the implementation of complete projects and technical cooperation projects, material aid projects and training programs connected with China's foreign aid. The Export-Import Bank of China is responsible for the assessment of projects with concessional loans, and the allocation and recovery of loans. Chinese embassies or consulates abroad are in charge of the direct coordination and management of foreign aid projects in the relevant countries. The local commercial administration departments are required to cooperate with the Ministry of Commerce to deal with affairs related to foreign aid within its jurisdiction.

In providing foreign aid, the related departments of the Chinese Government keep in close contact and cooperate with each other. In drafting foreign aid programs and foreign aid funds plans for each country, the Ministry of Commerce communicates regularly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance and the Export-Import Bank of China to seek their suggestions. Some other departments of the State Council are responsible for or participate in the management of foreign aid programs that require better professional expertise. In order to strengthen the coordination of the departments concerned, the ministries of commerce, foreign affairs and finance officially established the country's foreign aid inter-agency liaison mechanism in 2008. In February 2011, this liaison mechanism was upgraded into an inter-agency coordination mechanism.

VI. International Cooperation in Foreign Aid

China's foreign aid is provided mainly through bilateral channels. At the same time, China also has done its best to support and participate in aid programs initiated by organizations like the United Nations, and has actively conducted exchanges and explored practical cooperation with multilateral organizations and other countries in the field of development assistance with an open-minded attitude.

Since 2005, China has carried out exchanges in development assistance with many international multilateral organizations and countries. It has sent delegations to participate in conferences and dialogues on international development and cooperation such as the UN High-Level Meeting on Financing for Development, UN High-Level Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals, UN Development Cooperation Forum, High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Heiligendamm Process Dialogue between G8 and the five most important emerging economies, and WTO Global Review on Aid for Trade, to strengthen its communication and exchanges with other aid providers and promote South-South cooperation.

In addition to developing bilateral aid, China gets involved in trilateral and regional cooperation with some multilateral organizations and countries in capacity building, training and infrastructure construction that give full play to the advantages of all participants. Positive results have been achieved. In 1981, China worked with the UNDP to implement the Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries program in China, it has trained more than 6,000 technicians for other developing countries in more than 20 years. Since 1996, China has cooperated with United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization for sending Chinese agricultural experts to developing countries. By the end of 2009, China had sent more than 700 agricultural experts and technicians to Africa, the Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific area. In the field of training, China has conducted effective cooperation with multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the UN Industrial Development Organization and Singapore. Within the framework of the Greater Mekong Sub-regional cooperation, China, together with Thailand and the Asian Development Bank, raised funds to build the Laos section of the Kunming-Bangkok Highway, which was opened to traffic in March 2008. At present, China, Thailand, Laos and the Asian Development Bank are working together to build a bridge over the Mekong River for the Kunming-Bangkok Highway.

At present, the scope of international aid for development is being gradually expanded. South-South cooperation is developing rapidly, becoming an effective and beneficial supplement to South-North cooperation. Under the framework of South-South cooperation, China will work with all parties concerned to conduct complementary and fruitful trilateral and regional cooperation on the basis of respecting the needs of recipient countries and jointly promote the process of global poverty alleviation.

Conclusion

Currently, the environment for global development is not favorable. With the repercussions of the international financial crisis continuing to linger, global concerns such as climate change, food crisis, energy and resource security, and epidemic of diseases have brought new challenges to developing countries, aggravating the imbalance in the development of the global economy, and widening the gap between North and South, rich and poor. The international community should strengthen cooperation and jointly rise to the challenges facing development.

Against this background, China has a long way to go in providing foreign aid. The Chinese Government will make efforts to optimize the country's foreign aid structure, improve the quality of foreign aid, further increase recipient countries' capacity in independent development, and improve the pertinence and effectiveness of foreign aid. As an important member of the international community, China will continue to promote South-South cooperation, as it always has done, gradually increase its foreign aid input on the basis of the continuous development of its economy, promote the realization of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and make unremitting efforts to build, together with other countries, a prosperous and harmonious world with lasting peace.

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