Abstract
Since the 1990s, China has formalized its short-term foreign aid training for foreign officials and technological personnel. This type of training often lasts for 21 days and participants from invited countries arrive in China for a period of condensed study, with all fees covered by the Chinese government. By the end of 2009, China had organized more than 4000 short-term training programs for over 120,000 personnel from more than 50 countries. Along with the establishment of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and the constructional needs of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has gradually increased the export of its cultural products in foreign aid training. Surprisingly, such national-scale training is largely omitted from current scholarly research. Employing the “fragmented authoritarianism” model, we look at the administrative structure of China’s foreign aid training and provide rudimentary research into the field.
Introduction
As an important means to strengthen diplomatic relations between countries, foreign aid is increasingly establishing its importance in both maintaining world peace and promoting mutual development. With its remarkable economic growth since the “Reform and Open Door” policy was established in 1978, China has rapidly expanded the scale and diversified the components of its foreign aid to extend its impact on developing countries worldwide, especially those in Africa. From providing grants and interest-free loans to (a) small to medium-sized social welfare projects, (b) medium-sized to large infrastructure projects, and (c) general goods and materials between 1945 and 1978, China has since moved towards a collage of foreign aid programs. More specifically, it has incorporated concessional loans as an additional monetary source to finance its eight main types of foreign aid projects, including human resource development cooperation. Although previous literature has mostly focused on the international cooperation, the overall development of China’s foreign aid, or any specific foreign aid case, training programs for government officials and technical personnel, which are categorized under human resource development cooperation, have yet been discussed. However, as a crucial piece of the puzzle, these training programs provide an important channel for scholars to look into the complicated yet under-researched development of China’s foreign aid system.
Under the expectation of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and the Belt and Road Initiative, China highlights its current goal of development, which emphasizes “making a great deal for the world.” Under this goal, Chinese foreign aid is a corresponding project that involves three sets of mutually complementing elements: economic assistance, technical support, and culture sharing. The strategic deployment in the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (19th CPC National Congress) states the importance of continuing to deepen the “reform and open” policy, expand high-level openness, and maintain the economy in a reasonable range. In addition, in the first session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) in March 2018, the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) was established and is directly controlled by the State Council, which shows China’s foreign aid is undergoing a crucial transitional stage. Based on interviews with personnel from the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), it is confirmed the CIDCA has already been gradually taking over the foreign aid functions of MOFCOM. Because the CIDCA is at the sub-ministerial level and is specifically in charge of foreign aid issues, China’s foreign aid development has arguably been weighted with more importance.
Through building the framework of China’s foreign aid system, tracking the development of both China’s overall foreign aid and its foreign aid training programs in particular, and interviewing related personnel, we aim to obtain a preliminary understanding of how foreign aid training programs are situated in the overall foreign aid framework and their strengths and weaknesses.
Brief framework of China’s foreign aid system
Due to the limited academic literature on China’s foreign aid, we are going to provide a basic introduction to the current foreign aid system in China before further analysis. Previous research has pointed out that because China’s foreign aid may not precisely match the definition of official development assistance (ODA) provided by Development Assistance Committee under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, various foreign researchers have been relying on their own definitions (Grimm et al., 2011; Kitano, 2014; Strange et al., 2013). To better situate foreign aid training programs in China’s overall foreign aid framework, we adopted the official definition provided by the Information Office of the State Council (China), which denotes only three types of financial resources for funding foreign aid activities: grants (aid gratis), interest-free loans, and concessional loans (Information Office of the State Council, 2014). In this way, other financial resources are often claimed by foreign scholars as part of China’s foreign aid funding, such as official financial measures supporting overseas activities of Chinese enterprises (Kitano, 2014), and are not considered as China’s foreign aid in this research.
China started to provide grants and interest-free loans to developing countries, especially African countries, as early as the 1950s. Although China provided much financial and material assistance even at the expense of its own domestic livelihood, this type of “blood transfusion” assistance only yielded limited promising outcomes and resulted in much waste of money and resources (Xie, 2013). Pointed out by the State Council’s document (1980), Several Suggestions of Carefully Providing Foreign Aid, China had already stretched much of its limited capability to provide foreign aid, but at the same time very much neglected some basic economic rules of the aided country (Zhang et al., 1992). For example, the lack of surveillance from both China and Albania over the aided resources resulted in high-quality steel pipes used for daily light poles and manganese steel plates layered for cheap factory floors (Guo, 2002). The accumulation of these incidents and the growing requests of the aided countries jerked the direction of China’s foreign aid scheme, which explains the very first appearance of China’s concessional loans in 1995. Different from the first two types of finance mechanisms, which are directly provided through state finances, concessional loans are granted through the Export-Import Bank of China (EximBank) and, unlike the interest-free loans, unable to enjoy debt relief theoretically (Guancha, 2018). Coupled with the human resource development cooperation that often comes hand in hand with the aided projects, concessional loans mark a shift in the guiding principle of China’s foreign aid policy, which moves from a one-direction aid to a win-win cooperation. Some Chinese scholars also termed this shift as moving from “blood transfusion” to “blood formation” (Xie, 2013).
The first version (2011) of the White Paper released by the State Council Information Office defined eight major types of foreign aid activities (see Figure 1), namely complete projects, goods and materials, technical cooperation, human resource development cooperation, Chinese medical teams working abroad, emergency humanitarian aid, volunteer programs in foreign countries, and debt relief (Information Office of the State Council, 2014). Although most of the eight activities are funded through grants, some activities, such as complete projects and technical cooperation, may crossover different types of funding, namely grants, interest-free loans, and concessional loans.
Eight major types of foreign aid activities and the corresponding funding sources.
Including concessional loans as a financing source for complete projects is a typical example of the above-mentioned shift from “blood transfusion” to “blood formation,” and the training programs for governmental officials and technical personnel discussed below are another. In 2012, China completed approximately 2400 complete projects in more than 80 countries, with approximately 40% for public infrastructure, such as conference buildings, theatres, governmental offices, water factories, schools, hospitals, etc., and approximately 24.5% for industrial facilities, such as light industries, electronics, building materials, chemicals, etc. Appendix I provides a detailed breakdown of the composition of complete projects. Although the exact percentage is not available, it is believed an increasing number of complete projects is funded through the concessional loans, which theoretically are not allowed for debt relief. However, based on our fieldwork in a Chinese-aided water factory in Cameroon in 2012, the Chinese consul who was in charge of the factory was concerned that even if the project was under the concessional loan, the consul herself did not see a high possibility for Cameroonian government to repay the loan within the designated period. “It is a step forward to use concessional loans instead of grants to build the water factory,” said the consul, “I personally still do not see the possibility for its future repayment just by looking at the local government’s attitudes toward both China and foreign aid in general.”
In addition, based on various interviews with staff from MOFCOM, it is clear that although complete projects can bring local people a rapid improvement in their living standard—for example, the completion of the first phase of the Chinese-aided water factory in Douala (Cameroon) drastically reduced the rate of malaria infection in that city—the unsystematic and incomplete transmission of relevant technology due to the lack of capable local personnel can unavoidably increase the aided countries’ reliance on China. A member of MOFCOM staff shrugged when talking about a situation often heard in foreign aid projects in Africa: “our team went to build this high-tech conference building in Ghana. While Ghana has many well-educated people returning from European countries, somehow it was difficult to find capable workers to take care of those high-tech facilities after we left. Well, it is understandable because we shipped many half-built models from China that might not be available in Ghana. And Ghana itself does not produce similar items. Then the result was continuous reliance on our help. I mean, relying on us for a conference building is fine. . . but what if it is an industrial factory? It means that we need to send our teams regularly to monitor any possible breakdowns of the machines, and this is not sustainable.”
Gradually recognizing the unsustainable nature of completed projects without providing the corresponding technical support, since 1998 the Chinese government has put more effort into the training programs for both governmental officials and technical personnel, whose history and current stage of development will be introduced in the “The history and development of the foreign aid training programs” section below.
A brief review of the foreign aid development in the United States and Japan
Most scholarly research on foreign aid has focused on the United States (US) and covered almost all aspects of the country’s foreign aid development, including its history, policy, purpose, management, etc. Some research has also touched on the foreign aid development in European countries, especially Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), which are the two biggest donors of foreign aid to countries in Europe. Japan was also one of the top five aid donors in the world in the 2010s, after China, the US, Germany, and the UK. As the only other Asian country included on the list, Japan’s long history of foreign aid is a valuable reference for China. Taking into account the similar size of foreign aid from the US and the geographical proximity of Japan, here we briefly review the foreign aid development in these two countries.
US
As the second largest donor of foreign aid in the 2010s, 1 the first being China, the US has gradually shifted its purpose in providing development aid to other countries. The phrases employed by the US officials in describing foreign aid have already exposed such a change. For example, “security” is replaced by “peacekeeping” and no longer only denotes the Middle East. Although “humanitarian relief” remains an important purpose of US aid, its scope has expanded to tackle manmade disasters in other countries. In the 19th century, US aid encompassed three major purposes: promoting security (now called “peacekeeping”), supporting development, and providing humanitarian relief. In the 21st century, three other purposes have gained prominence in US foreign aid policy, namely, supporting economic and political transitions in former socialist countries, addressing transnational problems, and promoting democracy abroad.
Similar to the arrangement in China, as explained below, the management of foreign aid in the US also falls under several administrative organizations, which creates its rather cluttered foreign aid landscape. For example, the US has four bilateral aid agencies and contributes to seven multilateral development banks and numerous United Nations organizations. In addition, nearly every cabinet agency of the US government has its own “foreign aid” program. The abovementioned purpose of economic and political transition in former socialist countries is usually fulfilled by the US bilateral aid, which is directed by several regional and country-level coordinators in the Department of State and implemented by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Although not known as “foreign aid training” in the US, the means to fulfil the economic and political transitions is usually through providing technical assistance and training in certain areas, such as promoting private business, financing elections, training political party and media, supporting indigenous non-governmental organizations, etc. Various countries from the former Soviet Union and some less developed countries in Central Asia have benefited from the US transition assistance (Lancaster, 2000). Paying special attention to other countries’ political transitions and democracy promotion explains why various Chinese scholars have characterized US foreign aid as “politically loaded.”
Japan
Similar to the US, Japan provides technical assistance to various developing countries, especially those in Asia and the Middle East. Under Japan’s Asia-centric approach to foreign aid, for many years Indonesia was the main beneficiary of Japanese bilateral ODA but was overtaken by China in 1982. Although aiming to establish its regional presence by exerting certain impacts on aid recipients, previous research tracing the outcomes of Japanese foreign aid showed rather dismal results—however, gloomy outcomes are not uncommon for foreign aid projects in general, regardless of the donor country. For example, in 1987, Japan recorded the highest percentage (99.3%) of “untied/partially untied loans,” that is, the loan was extended without obliging the borrower to purchase goods from the country issuing the loan. This phenomenon reveals that Japan still has a long way to go before it catches up with its western counterparts in aid quality. It also suggests a tailor-made aid package for respective recipients is in urgent need. Japan’s aid programs are largely project based and mostly high-profile infrastructure development. It targets low-income countries (but not the least-developed countries) by providing them with technical skills and human resource development. In this way, Japan aligned its foreign aid policy with the concept of “heart-to-heart” diplomacy and “cooperation” rather than “charity” (Rix, 1990).
China is also facing similar problems in foreign aid development to those encountered by Japan in the last century. Aiming to transform from “blood transfusion” to “blood formation,” China is moving away from conducting “charity” but promoting “cooperation.” Japan’s Asia-centric focus might be less referable for China, which, due to historical reasons, started its foreign aid projects in Africa, and from there, expanded to other parts of the world.
The history and development of the foreign aid training programs
As a country with thousands of years of history, China had been attracting foreign personnel for a limited period of training as far back as the Sui Dynasty in 607 AD, during which time the Imperial Japanese government dispatched envoys to China to learn Chinese rituals, Chinese characters, laws, science, and technology. There could be as many as 500 envoys per mission and the ancient Chinese government even established specific pavilions to accommodate these foreign visitors, which is often understood as the earliest version of China’s foreign aid training programs.
Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China has allocated personnel and effort to foreign aid training. In the 1950s, China sent thousands of technical personnel to both Vietnam and North Korea for aiding and training purposes, and at the same time invited approximately 5500 Vietnamese interns/students and 2500 North Koreans to study technology-related subjects in China (Huang et al., 1986; Zhang, 2006). After the training, the trainees did not only bring the technologies back home, but also built the channel of communication between China and their home countries, which is a crucial aim for China when expanding these training programs.
The Bandung Conference, the first large-scale Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, marked a watershed for China’s foreign aid development. At the conference, China strengthened its diplomatic relationship with other Asian and African countries. In addition, coupled with various liberation movements in Africa in the 1950s, China found a niche to support liberation movements in Africa by voluntarily helping train professionals for African countries. It not only sent personnel to Africa, but more importantly, it also absorbed approximately 30 personnel from Egypt, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi to study science and technology in China, which represents the first batch of China’s “coming in” type of foreign aid training.
As the relationship between China and African countries developed, in the 1990s the development of a market economy in China also pushed its foreign aid training to a new stage. In October 1995, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, the predecessor of MOFCOM, for the first time clarified the role played by foreign aid training, which, substituting the role of pure monetary aid, would become central to China’s future foreign aid development.
In 1998, foreign aid training as a specific foreign aid activity was under full charge of MOFCOM. The MOFCOM Training Center, the only educational training center directly under MOFCOM, was chosen as the base camp for all “coming in” foreign aid training activities and successfully organized the very first training session for government officials from Africa. This new type of foreign aid training targeting foreign governmental officials epitomized the successful transformation of China’s foreign aid and foreign aid training in general, in which a direct communications channel is established among the high-level personnel between China and other developing countries (or recently some developed countries as well), with China taking over the role of culture sharer.
It is important to point out the Chinese government’s emphasis on culture sharing, which is the opposite of value imposing, as exemplified by the US. Various Chinese scholars have argued the foreign aid training provided by the US government, which was often strategically offered to selected developing countries, is politically loaded. Improving the living standards of people in developing countries is the second priority for the US, whose first priority is to expand “the so-called American style democracy and free market” to gain diplomatic advantages (Liu, 2001). One distinct feature of China’s foreign aid, as argued by both Chinese scholars and the government, is its non-intervention in the internal affairs of any foreign countries, which is vividly demonstrated in its foreign aid training as a glamorous showcase for China’s own history and culture, as will be explained in detail below.
At the end of 2009, China had already organized more than 4000 short-term training programs covering more than 20 fields, such as agriculture, transportation, light industry, etc., 2 for at least 120,000 government officials and technical personnel from over 50 countries. The training programs last approximately 21 days each, with all fees covered by China, including the trainees’ expenses.
Fragmented authoritarianism in China’s foreign aid administration
As shown in Figure 2, before March 2018 the management of foreign aid in China was spread over several administrative organizations, with the national-level administration, MOFCOM, regulating the lower-level administration (e.g. the Executive Bureau of International Economic Cooperation) and directly cooperating with other local commercial administrative departments. Because local commercial administrative departments are not on the vertical functional line under MOFCOM but under the direct control of other government agencies, this cooperative arrangement follows previous scholars’ observations of the more inclusive nature of the Chinese xitong in practice (Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, 1988). However, crossing the vertical lines and allocating foreign aid projects to different departments within the MOFCOM system inevitably impedes the efficiency of communication. To better understand the rather segmented structure of the authority exemplified by the administrative structure (the gray part in Figure 2) of China’s foreign aid, we referred to the traditional “fragmented authoritarianism” model introduced by Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg in 1988.
The administrative structure of the foreign aid training program.
Earlier research on the administrative structure of China roughly followed two major competing models, with one emphasizing the centralized power of the top political leaders and the other pointing to a more “cellular” perspective. The “cellular” model described the great concentration of power in the hands of provincial-level officials and leaders of lower level units (e.g. danwei). Although the available evidence can support either perspective, neither alone suffices to describe the whole picture of Chinese administrative system. To depict a more organic composition of the Chinese administrative system, Lieberthal and Oksenberg reconciled the seemingly contradictive perspectives by proposing the “fragmented authoritarianism” model.
Appearing to be the core dimension of the Chinese system, the fragmentation of authority leaves room for negotiations between different administrative organizations across levels. Excessive centralization stifles local initiatives, as exemplified by the strict top-down political model, whereas excessive decentralization may produce chaos and detract from the pursuit of the national interest, as shown by the “cellular” model. “Fragmented authoritarianism,” in contrast, captures the high elasticity within the system. The national government can in practice exert different levels of control over specific provinces. In turn, provinces, depending on their own power such as wealth, strategic significance, personal connections, ambition, or simply the acumen of their leaders, demonstrate different bargaining leverage over the central government. In extreme cases, localities can even exercise some of their increased autonomy in ways that run against the broad policy priorities of the national leaders. One obvious shortcoming of the fragmented authoritarianism is the long time spent in the negotiation process.
Under the situation of the foreign aid training, fragmented authoritarianism is often seen in the obstacles encountered by officials from the training institutions when reaching out for support from local entities, be it from enterprises or government bodies. Compared to foreseeable obstacles due to the lack of previous contact, unexpected incidents as a result of the lack of information between the vertical lines across ministries can also be very troublesome. To tackle the inefficiency of the fragmented authoritarianism within the administration structure, the CIDCA was established in 2018 to directly supervise foreign aid activities from the State Council. However, the CIDCA has also exposed some difficulties brought about by the mismatch between its leadership and the lower level staff implementing the training, implying more time is necessary to reach more efficient cooperation within the CIDCA itself.
Different from other activities under the human resource development cooperation, a foreign aid training program features (a) direct supervision from the MOFCOM and (b) “coming in” as opposed “going out.” Having foreign personnel staying in China, as argued by some management directors of the training center, is advantageous for China as it provides a more convenient environment for Chinese officials to conduct diplomatic work. “They [foreign government officials] are in China,” said one director of the training center, “so things are more controllable.”
The administrative system is broadly divided into two parts: (a) inside China, which includes both government and non-government entities, and (b) outside China, which refers to Chinese embassies and consulates overseas. Working on the front line of marketing and recruiting for foreign aid training, diplomats in the economic and commercial counselor’s office (under the supervision of MOFCOM) in Chinese embassies or consulates are responsible for (a) identifying the specific type of training that is needed by the respective country and can be provided by China, (b) reporting the needs to MOFCOM for approvals, (c) connecting with foreign officials in relation to recruiting procedures, and (d) processing related administrative procedures, such as visas and flight tickets, to finalize the steps for foreign personnel travelling to China. To ensure wide and accurate coverage of foreign aid training, potential participants need to go through a strict selection process to ensure their language ability, health condition, and age range 3 have achieved a certain intellectual, managerial, and administrative level. It is also worth noting potential participants are not limited to people from the countries that have established diplomatic relations with China. For example, when the Dominican Republic was still in a diplomatic relation with Taiwan in April 2018, Dominican Republican officials were already participating in a training for foreign officials in Beijing. On May 1, 2018, before the specific training period ended, the Dominican Republic announced it had severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
MOFCOM, which is under direct control of the State Council, receives requests from diplomats and consults with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance for both funding and feasibility issues. Three sectors under MOFCOM are in charge of foreign aid. Whereas the Executive Bureau of International Economic Cooperation and China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges is in charge of other foreign aid activities (see Figure 2), the Academy for International Business Officials (AIBO) has full responsibility for training programs.
“Fragmented authoritarianism” comes into play when the AIBO needs to initiate projects that involve participation from the entities shown at the very left of Figure 2, namely the EximBank and local commercial administrative departments. Because several of this study’s interviewees worked for the AIBO, we rely on their retrospect to illustrate how their interactions with local business entities exposed both the agency power of governmental bodies and the potential inefficient communication brought by the crossover of the vertical lines, as previously explained in the “fragmented authoritarianism” model. To give the trainees a comprehensive understanding of China by visiting Chinese enterprises, through MOFCOM the AIBO cooperates with local commercial and administrative departments to select willing enterprises to be shown. Support from local level officials is important, as many private enterprises that have not heard of foreign aid training might be hesitant to allow foreigners to visit. From the perspective of the AIBO, bringing foreign officials and business leaders to local Chinese enterprises is a “win-win” situation. These foreign officials and business leaders can receive firsthand information on the business development in China. At the same time, Chinese enterprises, especially private companies, can make direct contact with foreign business administrators, which may potentially expand Chinese businesses. For local commercial administrative departments, such cooperation may lead to potential growth of their local businesses, which would boost their administrative performance. However, in practice, AIBO staff expect uncooperative behavior from local commercial departments and the local enterprises they supervise. As explained by an interviewee from the AIBO, who was responsible for planning the field trips, “the smoothness of our communication with the local departments is highly correlated to their leaders’ own acumens.” As showed in Figure 2, the local departments and the AIBO are not linked to each other vertically but are parallel to each other. Even if the AIBO is more closely related to MOFCOM as the former is located in Beijing and is a national entity, it does not have the administrative power to give orders to local commercial departments.
Such an administrative structure provides local government an invaluable individual agency to selectively listen to the requests from the AIBO. If the local department holds a more “internationalized view” and considers participating in Chinese foreign aid training is beneficial to local development, then local staff cooperate with the AIBO more actively. Our interviewee said efficient communication often happens in more developed regions, where business cooperation with foreign entities is common. In relatively less developed areas, local staff might cast more doubt over holding field trips, because they often do not understand or foresee the advantages of doing so. When we further enquired whether any local commercial departments had ever directly rejected requests from the AIBO, our interviewee could not recall any direct rejection and emphasized that further communication and sometimes resorting to higher-level officials always works out. The communication in another direction, the one between the AIBO and the Chinese embassies or consulates overseas, is usually very efficient. “Our ambassadors and diplomats know the importance of the foreign aid training. Plus, the training is also a part of their jobs, right?” commented by our interviewee. Therefore, it is clear that leaders’ acumen plays an important role in the overall communication of the foreign aid training. Especially in the local commercial departments, this acumen can determine their willingness to cooperate.
Communication with local administrative staff is not the final obstacle in field trip planning, because the leaders of the enterprises themselves can also be difficult to communicate with. When staff from the AIBO directly approach Chinese enterprises based on the recommendations from the local commercial administrative departments, they are not surprised to receive rejection or encounter uncooperative reactions. This unsmooth cooperation exposes the distrust from Chinese enterprises towards the AIBO. Although these enterprises may often interact with local commercial administrative departments, the AIBO under MOFCOM is not directly related to their business interests. Additionally, some business owners have expressed concerns about exposing business operations to foreign officials, which may attract unnecessary attention and result in even more detailed scrutinization from the Chinese administrative system. State-owned enterprises are usually more cooperative, especially when facing requests from local commercial departments, whereas private enterprises are generally more conservative. Even when private enterprises agreed to take part, AIBO staff still recounted some incidents caused by distrust from the leaders of the enterprises during the actual field trip.
Our interviewee also mentioned a special incident that happened on a field trip in Beijing, when the mass transit system did not receive initial orders from its own upper-level government officials. When several groups of foreign officials, mostly Africans, took the subway in Beijing as part of a cultural experience, subway staff stopped the whole crowd of foreign officials to ask for their identification. However, this incident was solved immediately when the AIBO staff members directly called the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, which avoided a potential diplomatic conflict. Our interviewee believed such an efficient resolution was only possible in large cities such as Beijing, where administrative staff are more experienced in issues involving foreigners.
As shown in Figure 1, although China’s foreign aid activities are growing and diversifying rapidly, the current administrative structure has somehow broken these activities into different administrative organizations. For example, although MOFCOM is in charge of training activities under human resource development cooperation, educational programs under the same category (see Figure 1), such as scholarships for foreign students to pursue degrees in Chinese universities, are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. Although this arrangement may encourage inter-departmental communication, it lowers the overall authority of the departments in charge of foreign aid training, especially when they need to communicate with administrative bodies outside the MOFCOM system. To avoid “fragmented authoritarianism” becoming even more splintered, the professional development of foreign aid requires an overarching umbrella for all activities. Additionally, a negotiation over the operation of foreign aid has been taking place between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MOFCOM for some time. Both ministries were striving to take more control of foreign aid activities to benefit their diplomatic performances. However, unlike foreign aid operations in the US, in which its fragmented operation was deemed rather desirable, the Chinese government was looking for a more centralized method to move towards the authoritative direction within the “fragmented authoritarianism.”
Therefore, in the first session of the 13th NPC in March 2018, the CIDCA was established as the highest foreign aid agency in China, which is mainly in charge of (a) formulating strategic guidelines, plans, and policies for foreign aid, (b) coordinating and offering advice on major foreign aid issues, (c) advancing China’s reforms in matters involving foreign aid, (d) identifying major programs, and (e) supervising and evaluating the relevant implementation (CIDCA, 2018). As a negotiated product between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MOFCOM, the administrative structure of the CIDCA shows a mix of personnel from both ministries: leadership positions are mainly occupied by personnel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whereas the lower-level staff was mainly from MOFCOM. In terms of the administrative level, the CIDCA has elevated all its staff to at least one level higher than before.
Although the CIDCA is still in its nascent stage, our interviews with staff from the AIBO revealed that both the personnel and the functions of foreign aid training have been gradually transferred to the CIDCA and the completion of transfer is expected in the foreseeable future. “More and more colleagues have gradually trickled to the new office. We will all move there [the office under CIDCA] eventually, we just don’t know the exact time yet. I mean, direct control from the State Council is definitely an elevation of our administrative level. Hopefully, we will have more bargaining power in implementing any future projects. We will see,” a member of AIBO staff told us. He used to be a diplomat for several Chinese consulates abroad, during which time he was in charge of gathering the training needs of the countries in which he was located. According to the most updated regulations of MOFCOM, the same diplomat cannot be abroad for more than 7 consecutive years. Therefore, he was sent back to China for a 2-year period before his next shift. During the 2 years, he was in charge of organizing foreign aid training in China.
In a recent update with an AIBO staff member who transferred to the CIDCA a year ago, we enquired whether the rise of the administrative level had eased their daily tasks. The answers we received show the CIDCA is still in an adjustment period. For example, since former personnel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took over the leadership positions in the CIDCA, they urgently needed to demonstrate some type of professionalism in foreign aid affairs. One of their innovations was to set up a new channel to discover potential foreign aid training projects: today, the institutions and enterprises within China can actively report the types of training they can provide to foreign officials, whereas previously all training requests were submitted by Chinese embassies and consulates overseas. Although some diplomats expressed concerns over the new channel, as the requests submitted by Chinese enterprises may rarely fulfill the needs of foreign officials, more time is needed to test all the innovations of the CIDCA.
An overview of structure and content of foreign aid training
As previously mentioned, most of the short-term training programs last for 21 days, in which at least 40% of time must be allocated to classroom teaching and approximately 40% to internships, seminars, visiting enterprises, etc. University professors specializing in international relations, China studies, or any specific technological disciplines or previous diplomats are often invited as presenters. There are both standardized and customized course packages offered to different groups of foreign representatives who have different training purposes. The standardized course package is a comprehensive introduction to China, which covers its history, language, political system, current development, Chinese cultural values, etc. The customized course package also includes these broad topics, but in a briefer version. The customized training will allocate more time to specialized material. For example, China’s relationship with Africa and its aid programs there are included in training sessions with African government officials. If training organizers invite foreign technical agriculture personnel, China’s experience of the agricultural technology that dramatically improved its agricultural productivity will surely become the focus of the training. Similarly, foreign medical trainees will have the opportunity to learn Chinese traditional medicine and China’s experience of sending medical teams abroad.
A typical schedule for 21-day training is presented in Table 1. A sketch of the schedule already reveals the program’s emphasis on combining field trips with lectures, so foreign officials/technical personnel can obtain a much deeper understanding of China from their own experiences. It is necessary to note that because the field trips are also carefully selected by the Chinese government, it can be argued that these participants only observed those aspects the government wanted to present. Through analyzing the content of the lectures, we aim to summarize the national image the Chinese government strives to promote. Appendix II presents some examples of the composition of participants’ 21-day training.
Sample schedule of the 21-day training program for government officials.
Source: We translated a sample schedule obtained from a staff member from the Academy for International Business Officials (AIBO), who agreed this information could be released for reference purposes. We have also deleted some confidential information from the original schedule.
China as a developing country
An interesting “conflict” in the sharing process is probably the different understanding of the economic position of China as a developing country. Throughout the presentations, one method China employs to differentiate itself from other traditional aid providers, such as the US, Germany, and Japan, and to exemplify its unique characteristics in designing strategies related to foreign aid is to position itself as on an equal footing with its aided peers. This emphasis on equal footing is different from the US and Japan. The US government believes the development in its colonies (e.g. the Philippines and Puerto Rico) could only be fulfilled through exporting its own technical assistance. Coming from a humbler foundation, China is not capable of adopting a top-down approach to its foreign aid policy. Similarly, Japan was also eager to establish its leadership in Asia through foreign aid, which could offset its “embarrassingly large trade surplus” with several western countries (Rix, 1989). Providing large amounts of aid sometimes at the expense of its own domestic livelihood, China was not targeting the position of a leader, but emphasizing an equal footing and mutual development. For example, in the presentation on China-Africa cooperation and trading relations, the presenter, a professor from international relations department in a top university in China, carefully stressed certain wordings to emphasize that both China and the participating African countries are similar in being developing countries. The presenter argued that because they are developing countries, it is much easier to understand why China and African countries share similar development tasks and objectives and, compared to other developed countries, can better learn from each other’s development experiences. In addition, the presenter also frankly confessed China’s limited capability in providing foreign aid, which shows the importance of cooperation and mutual development. However, how this information is received by participating officials is more interesting.
Although the initial aim of field trips is to show a positive image of China, some officials’ perceptions from the field trips might question the concept of China being a developing country. For example, an official from the Central Africa Republic questioned Chinese officials at the end of a training session, “I was truly amazed by the glamorous infrastructures of China. Before this training, my understanding of China was a poorly developed place with numerous muddy roads and people would have difficulties for obtaining clean water, just like my country. Given that, if China is a developing country, then where my country should be placed? How can we believe that we are on equal footing with China, without China considering itself as a savior, just like the US?”
Similar unsuccessful message transfers are common during short-term training and might require further articulation from China. To provide more information, at this stage the Chinese government has implemented new policies in relation to the selection of locations for the field trip. Compared to only showing the more developed aspects of China, it is now more important to provide a balanced view, so including less-developed regions into the field trip becomes a must. If the training session is too short to visit more than one city, then the administrators usually pick a less-developed area adjacent to the major field trip site for balance.
China as a culture sharer
In addition to showing the economic power of China, in the first few presentations much time is also be devoted to introducing the long history and recent development of China, starting as early as the Yellow Emperor in 2711 BC. Specific attention is also given to explaining the Chinese Civil War between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang from 1945 to 1949, which eases the process of explaining the current complicated Cross-Strait relations by emphasizing that Taiwan had long been a part of China.
Weaved into the history introduction is also the benevolence promoted by Confucianism and the dialectical thinking of Taoism. Confucian’s benevolence may somehow link to China’s current foreign aid policies, which are arguably not for political benefit or exploitation. The dialectic thinking of Taoism is also intricately related to the dialectics within Marxism, which are connected to the current overarching political ideology in China.
Given the above, China has carefully presented its image as a peaceful culture sharer rather than “a value imposer” exemplified by the US and Japan. As previously mentioned, one major purpose of US foreign aid is to promote democracy among recipients, whereas China does not intervene with other countries’ political or cultural development. Japan did not specifically promote democracy among its foreign-aid recipients in the 1980s. However, when the country later became a major donor of foreign aid, in June 1992 the Japanese government adopted its first formal policy on the development aid, the ODA Charter, which identified such factors as democratization, human rights, and restraints in military spending as preconditions for developing countries to receive Japanese aid (Hook et al., 1998).
In the Third Plenary Session of the 12th China Central Committee, President Xi Jinping once again stated that China is a responsible country pursuing both equality and peace. The presentations strive to demonstrate the rich culture of China without implying that other countries should adopt China’s value system. The way China presents its culture today is rather similar to how ancient Chinese officials brought Chinese products to other countries with the purpose of impressing foreigners.
The Chinese culture shared in the presentations is not limited to traditional culture or cultural values in general, but expands to business culture to facilitate participants’ understanding of both Chinese domestic and overseas enterprises. Huawei is an often-mentioned example in these presentations as a typical embodiment of Chinese culture. Although some western countries criticize Huawei for its potential risk to their countries’ national security system, during training foreign officials receive information that Huawei has a combination of several Chinese cultural features: dedication, devotion, persistence, motivation, and most importantly, unbending endurance under westerners’ suppression. By sharing this type of business culture, the Chinese government evokes empathetic feelings from foreign officials, who themselves might have experienced similar suppression during colonialization and thus become more emotionally connected to China.
China as a diversity promoter
Training is also a chance to clarify some common “misunderstandings” of China, two of which are political democracy and religious freedom. Exporting democracy to previous socialist countries is one major purpose of the US foreign aid, as explained previously. Differentiating itself from the traditional democracy promoted by the US and arguing against the communist dictatorship hat, China terms its political system as “democratic centralism,” a phrase borrowed from Chairman Mao who claimed that “democratic centralism is centralized on the basis of democracy and is democratic under centralized guidance.” To further illustrate the “democratic centralism,” the presenter would explain how the eight democratic parties 4 in China participate in the governance.
Although China is not a religious country, most training would nevertheless incorporate a session to introduce the different religions in China. The presenter usually begins with the five major religions in the country, which are—from the most popular to the least—Buddhism (52.7%), Christianity (19.1%), Muslim (15.5%), Taoism (10.2%), and Catholicism (9.7%). Because religious issues are sensitive in China and it is important to present China’s religious freedom, the presenter often compromises depth for the number of religions being introduced during the presentation. For example, in China, Christianity is a much more populous religion than Muslim. However, possibly due to the historically sensitive nature of Christianity in China—the Chinese government is worried about the potential international connection of Chinese Christianity—the long history of the development of Christianity in China is simplified in one sentence: Christianity has made several attempts to spread itself in China, but failed. In contrast, Chinese Muslims, many of whom are less “troublesome,” unproportionally became the focus of introduction.
The strengths and weaknesses of China’s foreign aid training
Although China has a long history of human resources cooperation, the current model of foreign aid training only started in the late 1990s. As of 2019, approximately 20 years after training was categorized as a central method of foreign aid, a brief evaluation of its performance and effectiveness is necessary. Possibly due to the sensitive and secretive nature of training, which makes it difficult to obtain relevant materials, little research has attempted a comprehensive evaluation. Based on our interviews with some internal personnel and limited publicly available materials, here we summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the current stage of foreign aid training from the perspectives of program designs and outcomes.
Through training, China has successfully established its symbolic diplomatic superiority, raised its national image as a grateful country, diversified established models of international aid, built a channel to efficiently communicate with higher-level foreign officials, and more importantly, improved the self-sustainability of aided countries. At the same time, the weaknesses in training are equally obvious, with the leading two being the lack of an overarching theoretical guidance and the lack of appropriate measurement of the training outcomes.
Strengths
Chinese symbolic diplomatic superiority
The training itself is a culture-sharing process initiated by China to promote further inter-country cooperation. Emphasizing the sharer role, China is implying it is the center of this exchange process. By inviting foreign officials to stay in China as participants, or more precisely, as guests, China is also taking over the role of host and establishing its diplomatic superiority symbolically. An inaccurate comparison of training is how the representatives from the vassal states in ancient China regularly paid tribute to the Chinese emperors. However, representatives now come from much further away with all fees covered by the Chinese government.
Improving China’s national image as a grateful country
Many Chinese people find it difficult to understand the logic of aiding other developing countries when China is a developing country itself. Some junior staff at the training center even expressed similar views when they first learnt about China’s foreign aid. Most Chinese citizens are unaware that China has received large amounts of foreign aid in the past 30 years; although many developed countries, such as the UK and Japan, helped China financially during its economic development, this was rarely mentioned by the Chinese media. Traditional Chinese culture values giving back. According to staff in the AIBO, organizing training is compatible with Chinese traditional values and thus promotes China’s national image as a grateful country.
Diversifying the established international models of foreign aid training
When we conducted our fieldwork in Cameroon, we unexpectedly found most Cameroonians were unaware of China’s contribution to the development of their local economy. However, at the same time, they were familiar with several western countries’ biases toward China, which shows the importance of exporting culture in addition to pure technical assistance. Foreign aid training fills this gap by being a type of culture export. Nevertheless, to differentiate itself from other foreign aid training provided by developed countries, China became a culture sharer instead of a value exporter. In this way, China diversifies the established international models of foreign aid training.
Efficient communication with high-level foreign officials
In diplomatic settings, the meeting location is important in showing the power differences between the participating countries. Holding training in China demonstrates the country’s symbolic democratic power and practically provides a convenient way for the Chinese government to directly convey its thoughts to foreign officials, the people who have a say in their own countries’ development. To borrow a saying from a member of AIBO staff, “a Chinese diplomat will worry about being eavesdropped on even in his own embassy in foreign countries. . . now foreign officials are in China, we can finally be sure that everything is truly under our control.”
Improvement in the sustainability of aided countries
As previously mentioned, one problem the lack of skilled people who can keep the projects running once the Chinese technological teams have left. Training can partially alleviate this problem by selecting participants with similar technological backgrounds and provide them with directly transferrable technologies. Nevertheless, short-term training is only a starting point as it is impossible to convey all the core technologies in 21 days. Additionally, it is hard to estimate the training outcomes and adjust the materials accordingly. To compensate for these shortcomings, China also provides long-term training that usually lasts between 90 days and 1 year to countries with relevant needs.
Weaknesses
Compared to its strengths, training’s weaknesses are more obvious, which might be related to its overall lack of evaluation in the past 20 years.
Lack of overarching theoretical guidance
Traditional foreign aid providers, such as the US and Japan, are often equipped with a whole package of professionals and scholars who specialize in international development. For example, USAID has set a clear vision and mission for the country’s foreign aid operations, which are to promote and demonstrate democratic values in other countries on behalf of the American people (USAID, 2018). As a developing country, China clearly understands the need to differentiate itself from other traditional foreign aid providers to gain more support, possibly political, from its developing peers. However, what is still lacking at this point is the exact form of differentiation, which reveals the void in theoretical guidance. From China’s side, theoretical development has not been a priority in the past due to its overall practical mentality that emphasizes practice over theoretical guidance. This mentality is in line with Deng Xiaoping’s famous saying, “it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice.” However, after 20 years of providing foreign aid training in practice, building a comprehensive theoretical framework that provides the overall future direction is imminent.
Lack of appropriate measurement for the outcomes of training
The Handbook for Foreign Aid Training Monitored by the MOFCOM specifies that Chinese embassies and consulates overseas are responsible for gathering feedback and conducting follow-up surveys for training (AIBO, 2010). In practice, due to the limited manpower available in the Chinese embassies and consulates and the large numbers and high turnover rates of trainees, obtaining timely feedback becomes an impractical task. The AIBO also has limited manpower and relies on a few full-time staff members and many college interns to regulate training. To make the administrative structure even more problematic, many of the full-time staff members are temporarily borrowed from other departments under MOFCOM, and thus are not capable of or lack the incentive to conduct follow-up work with the trainees. At this moment, the limited feedback from trainees was usually gathered by academic institutions partnered with the AIBO to share some of AIBO’s training responsibilities.
In addition to the lack of feedback, MOFCOM lacks a standard procedure to keep in contact with the trainees. One goal of the training is to widely spread China’s culture to other countries through the mouths of the trainees. However, the lack of contact makes this goal only half achieved. Moreover, the lack of contact will incur an extra cost in the next round of the recruitment process, which puts an extra burden on the organizers.
For future development, it is suggested to allocate a specific group of personnel to conduct follow-up surveys to better monitor the foreign aid training.
Conclusion and future research directions
In this article, we provided a preliminary framework for the overall foreign aid system in China, in which foreign aid training is the only “coming in” type of training organized by MOFCOM under human resource development cooperation. Focusing on foreign aid training, we also looked at its history of development, which shows it has arrived at a crucial transitional stage.
By examining the incidents during the communication between staff from the AIBO and from the local commercial departments, we confirmed Lieberthal and Oksenberg’s model of “fragmented authoritarianism.” Communication between the AIBO and the local commercial department shows the agency and the inefficiency brought about by the non-vertical but parallel relation between the two government entities. The level of efficient communication largely depends local staff members’ acumen, which also corresponds to the “fragmented authoritarianism” model. In comparison, communication between the AIBO and Chinese embassies and consulates is usually very smooth, because the latter know the value and importance of this training.
We have briefly compared the foreign training of China and the US, and China and Japan. China is unique in its non-intervention in the political structures of the receiving countries. In terms of the administrative structure of foreign aid management, both China and the US have demonstrated a rather fragmented management of their foreign aid activities. However, aiming to further professionalize its foreign aid provision, China recently moved towards a more centralized structure, which is demonstrated by the establishment of the CIDCA in 2018.
Due to the sensitive nature of this type of foreign aid and the lack of scholars involved in its administrative process, there is a lack of scholarly research on this important topic. Therefore, our preliminary research mainly aims to bring this potential field of study to people’s attention so that in the future more scholars can be involved in designing the structure of China’s foreign aid training. At this stage, we believe a comprehensive theoretical framework to guide the training is imminently necessary, and various loopholes in the current managerial structure, such as failing to keep in touch with past trainees, need to be examined.
Future scholars may want to look into the following aspects of the foreign aid training: (a) the outcome and effectiveness of China’s foreign aid training, (b) how this training can be related to China’s foreign aid programs in general, (c) how participants from developing countries view China’s foreign aid activities, (c) whether China’s foreign aid training is as apolitical as its government claims, and (d) how China cooperates with other aid-providing countries in relation to foreign aid training, etc. More scholarly attention in this field will be beneficial for the development of foreign aid training and China’s foreign aid activities in general.
Footnotes
Appendix
Students’ composition of China’s short-term foreign aid training (samples).
| Title of the class | Nationalities | No. of countries involved | Language | No. of students | Duration (days) | Fieldtrip(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China-Arabic countries: national financial management officials | Jordan, Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Qatar, Palestine, Kuwait, Yemen, Lebanon, Oman | 13 | Arabic | 23 | 20 | Jinan, Tsingtao |
| Jordan officials for economic management | Jordan | 1 | Arabic | 21 | 20 | Ningbo |
| China-African countries: diplomatic officials | Cameroon, Comoros, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Malawi, Mali | 9 | French | 26 | 90 | Xining, Harbin, Ningbo |
| China-South Pacific and Caribbean countries: public administration | Saint Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Tonga, Vanuatu | 5 | English | 21 | 10 | Amoy |
| Madagascar: diplomatic officials | Madagascar | 1 | French | 13 | 15 | Pingdingshan |
Source: We translated several training plans from an Academy for International Business Officials (AIBO) staff member, who agreed this basic information could be released for reference purposes. We have also deleted some confidential information from the original plans.
Acknowledgements
Skylar Biyang Sun thanks Professor Eric Fong from the University of Hong Kong for his continuous support in the development of the author’s research interests, Laura W for the support in the arrangement of interviews, and gives special thanks to her alma mater Franklin and Marshall College, which granted her the Paul A Mueller, Jr. Summer Travel Award. This award funded her research trip to Cameroon in the summer of 2012.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
