Chinese aid in the Pacific: Playing the short game
Author: Fergus Hanson
Watching China’s reaction to the failed Rio-Chinalco deal and the decision to let Rebiya Kadeer into the country has been interesting. To an outside observer, the rhetoric and response from Beijing sometimes seem surprisingly immature.
But China doesn’t reserve its overzealous responses for the big picture multi-billion deals and alleged terrorists. In 2008, I released a policy brief on China’s aid program in the Pacific. The Chinese Foreign Ministry opted to counter with an official rebuke at a news conference, calling it ‘totally pointless and unacceptable’. When this year’s version of the report, which tracks China’s aid giving in the region, came out, it was the Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times that laid in.