An expert on Chinese foreign aid says China is learning lessons about how to deliver aid through ventures like the Cook islands Te Mato Vai water project.
China and New Zealand have worked together on the scheme to pipe water around Rarotonga which is one of the first of China's trilateral aid projects in the region.
China's also working with Australia on malaria diagnosis and research in Papua New Guinea.
Denghua Zhang has just submitted his PhD thesis on Chinese foreign aid in the Asia Pacific at the Australian National University.
He spoke to Sally Round.
China and NZ flags
Photo: 123RF
Transcript
DENGHUA ZHANG: I think it is encouraging that the Chinese government is showing interest in conducting the co-operation with traditional donors because it used to focus mainly on bilateral aid and to me this kind of trilateral partnership is not only good for the recipient countries but also is beneficial for Chinese global image building as a responsible global power and also the trilateral aid co-operation also provides opportunities for China to engage with traditional donors on aid delivery and also to learn from some of the aid delivery experience or practices of traditional donors.
SALLY ROUND: You say that they want to learn more from traditional donors. Have they seen mistakes in their aid in the past?
DZ: Based on my research I think it is very interesting or, to be more accurate, it is very encouraging that the Chinese aid officials and also the researchers they are showing more interest in this kind of engagement with traditional donors and they mentioned the Chinese government is interested in learning from some of the practices of traditional donors in areas such as project facilitative study and project monitoring and project maintenance after completion. They're showing more and more interest in learning from traditional donors in these areas and regarding the impact of traditional donors, whether China has learnt from these trilateral partnerships, I think it's still too early to say at this stage because the Chinese government is still piloting this kind of new modality and most of the Chinese trilateral aid projects are either in the early stage of implementation or they have just been finished recently and it will take some time for the project assessment to see whether they have achieved the target they expect to achieve.
SR: So do you think there will be more projects in the future, going along this path of experimentation in the Pacific?
DZ: Yes I think so. It is very encouraging that because of the small size of some of the Pacific island countries, they become the testing ground of Chinese trilateral aid co-operation with traditional donors. To me that is being small but being smart. My idea is that the Chinese government will continue to test this kind of trilateral aid co-operation in the near future including in the Pacific region but the Chinese government will continue to be very cautious about this kind of experimentation and also they will focus a lot on their current pilot projects and see whether the current projects can produce good results as expected. Also if they do have this kind of trilateral aid co-operation in the future I expect that that will happen in those less sensitive sectors, such as the sectors of agriculture, public health and even climate change. It could be more difficult for China and the traditional donors to pilot projects in those big infrastructure projects because that will involve a lot of economic interests there and for the large infrastructure projects they are very, very complicated and very, very difficult to manage compared with current small-scale trilateral projects.
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