Full Text: China's Foreign Aid (1)

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Full Text: China's Foreign Aid (1)

Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-7-10 10:38:15

China's Information Office of the State Council issued a white paper on China's foreign aid on Thursday. Following is the full text:

China's Foreign Aid (2014)

Information Office of the State Council

The People's Republic of China

July 2014, Beijing

Preface

I. Developing Foreign Assistance Cause Steadily

II. Helping Improve People's Livelihood

III. Promoting Economic and Social Development

IV. Foreign Assistance under Regional Cooperation Mechanism

V. Participation in International Exchanges and Cooperation

Conclusion

Preface

China is the world's largest developing country. In its development, it has endeavored to integrate the interests of the Chinese people with people of other countries, providing assistance to the best of its ability to other developing countries within the framework of South-South cooperation to support and help other developing countries, especially the least developed countries (LDCs), to reduce poverty and improve livelihood. China has proactively promoted international development and cooperation and played a constructive role in this aspect.

When providing foreign assistance, China adheres to the principles of not imposing any political conditions, not interfering in the internal affairs of the recipient countries and fully respecting their right to independently choosing their own paths and models of development. The basic principles China upholds in providing foreign assistance are mutual respect, equality, keeping promise, mutual benefits and win-win.

In recent years, China's foreign assistance has kept growing. The following is an introduction of China's foreign assistance from 2010 to 2012.

I. Developing Foreign Assistance Cause Steadily

The scale of China's foreign assistance kept expanding from 2010 to 2012. Besides complete projects and goods and materials, which were the main forms of China's foreign assistance, technical cooperation and human resources development cooperation also saw remarkable increases. Asia and Africa were the major recipient areas of China's foreign assistance. To promote the realization of Millennium Development Goals, China directed most of its assisting funds to low-income developing countries.

1. Financial Resources for Foreign Assistance

From 2010 to 2012, China appropriated in total 89.34 billion yuan (14.41 billion US dollars) for foreign assistance in three types: grant (aid gratis), interest-free loan and concessional loan.

Grant is mainly offered to help recipient countries build small or medium-sized social welfare projects, and to fund human resources development cooperation, technical cooperation, material assistance and emergency humanitarian aid. In the three years, China provided 32.32 billion yuan of grants, accounting for 36.2 percent of the total assistance volume.

Interest-free loan is mainly used to help recipient countries construct public facilities and launch projects to improve people's livelihood. In the three years, China offered 7.26 billion yuan of interest-free loans, taking up 8.1 percent of its foreign assistance volume.

Concessional loan is mainly used to help recipient countries undertake manufacturing projects and large and medium-sized infrastructure projects with economic and social benefits, or for the supply of complete plants, machinery and electronic products. In the three years, the concessional loans China provided to other countries amounted to 49.76 billion yuan, or 55.7 percent of its total assistance volume in the same period.

Foreign assistance budget is put under the unified management of the Ministry of Finance in line with the budget and final accounts system. Concessional loans are raised by the Export-Import Bank of China on the market. As the loan interest is lower than the benchmark interest released by the People's Bank of China, the difference is made up by the state as financial subsidies.

Graphics shows the distribution of China's foreign assistance funds according to the income level of recipient countries from 2010 to 2012, according to a white paper on China's foreign aid issued by China's Information Office of the State Council on July 10, 2014. (Xinhua/China's Information Office of the State Council)

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