Challenges that International Aid Agencies face in China

by Kazuki Otsuka, 4 June 2009

On 4th of June we visited the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) China office, which is located within the embassy of Canada. Since two armed Chinese security policemen in uniform guarded the embassy and we all were asked to leave our passports and mobile phones at the entrance due to the security reasons, some of us became nervous. However, we were well-received by three CIDA officials. At the meeting, they explained about CIDA’s cooperation strategy to China and gave a brief summary of its programme in China. From a more practical perspective of view they also pointed out (frankly) some challenges which the CIDA China office has faced.

According to the explanation, the priority areas are 1) Human Rights, Democratic Development, and Good Governance, and 2) Environmental Sustainability. Generally speaking, the former is quite a sensitive issue to the Chinese government, and it can be said that it is extremely tough to measure the results of the cooperation and many international donors have been struggling with how they can approach this area in China. However, I was so impressed that CIDA has invested 95% of the budgetary resources to the area, focusing on topics which the Chinese government is specifically concerned with. For instance, the Chinese government has recognized the potential tension due to the lack of the social support system to the rural migrants to cities. Thus, CIDA has already supported increasing the awareness of laws related with the “Labour right” of the migrants, based on the “rights base approach”. It was convincing that since Canada itself has received a huge number of immigrants, and obtained expertise in how the social security net for the immigrants can be established, CIDA has cooperated in this topic.

In addition, the CIDA officials provided an explanation of CIDA’s challenges in China. One of them is the justification of CIDA’s presence in China, in their words, “demonstrating results for Canadian domestic audiences”. The point is that a large majority of Canadian tax-payers and politicians have assumed that since China has been relatively well developed, CIDA should allocate its financial resources from China to less developed nations. Although the CIDA China office has tried hard to persuade those domestic audiences to agree the continuous cooperation to China with a certain size, the amount of the CIDA’s budget to China has been dramatically decreased since 2007, i.e. it was 30 millions CAD in 2007, 20 millions CAD in 2008, and 14 millions CAD in 2009.

Personally I really sympathised with the situation of the CIDA China office. Because regarding the Japanese case, the government has decided to focus more on grant programme (mainly technical cooperation), and to stop a new ODA loan programme to China in 2007. The reason varies. Some say that since China ranked as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves, the demand for capital has been lowering. The others, however, say since Japanese tax-payers and politicians have supposed that Japan’s ODA should be allocated not to relatively well developed nations such as China, but to less developed nations. Therefore, those who are related with Japan’s ODA to China also have met the same kind of challenges which CIDA has recently faced.