Japanese and Chinese foreign aid play significant roles in each nation's foreign policy strategies as well as overseas development worldwide. Foreign aid and investment's importance has increased for both the People's Republic of China and Japan, especially as strategic competition between the two nations has increased since 2000. Many scholars have analyzed the similarities and differences in the two nations' aid strategies and distribution but have not yet closely examined and compared the sub-national players who determine aid policy in practice. As the agents that implement aid projects, these players translate upper-level strategy into action and, as a result, determine said strategy's success. This thesis investigates: how do the domestic bureaucracies in both Japan and China process various flows of information, interact with other actors, set agendas, and attempt to influence aid policy? Key factors in an aid agency or ministry's ability to shape aid decision-making include its autonomy relative to upper-level government organizations, its network with partner countries as well as domestic firms and financial institutions, and the cohesiveness of its bureaucratic culture. In the Japanese case, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) enjoys a high level of both formal and informal autonomy from the prime minister, cabinet and National Security Council, has maintained a close and distinct network with partner country bureaucrats and private sector actors, and has developed its own internal cultural norms that emphasize humanitarian and developmental impact. In contrast, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), its primary aid coordinator, maintains some informal autonomy from the State Council, but lacks the agenda-setting power, networks, and bureaucratic culture to exert substantial decision-making power at the aid project level, particularly after the 2018 founding of the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA). The various other aid and investment implementers in both nations operate in similar institutional contexts where decision-making influence is determined by differences in information, networks, and internal values as well as formally delegated powers. As a result, in the Japanese case, lower-level agents and their understanding of partner country conditions more heavily influence aid decision-making, whereas high-level strategic directives are more determinative of Chinese aid decision-making.

The world order as we know it is currently undergoing profound changes, and in its wake, so is foreign aid. Donors of foreign aid, development assistance or development cooperation around the world are already facing new challenges in the changing development architecture. This is an architecture that globally seems to become increasingly forgiving of foreign aid as a win-win concept that also meets the donors’ own national interests—something that has been an unofficial Japanese trademark for many years. This book examines Japan’s development assistance as it transitions away from Official Development Assistance and towards Development Cooperation. In this transition, the strong and reciprocal relationships between Japanese development policy and comprehensive security, diplomacy, foreign, domestic and economic policies are likely to become even more consolidated and integrated. The utilization of, and changes within, Japanese development policy therefore affects not only recipients of foreign aid but also the relationships Japan enjoys with its allies and strategic partners, as well as the relations to competing donors and rivals in the region and around the world. Japanese foreign aid as such provides an extremely interesting case from where regional and even global changes can be understood. Written by a multidisciplinary team of contributors from the fields of political science, international relations, development, economics, public opinion and Japan studies, the book sets out to be innovative in capturing the essence of the changing patterns of development cooperation, and more importantly, Japan’s role in within it, in an era of great change. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Foreign Policy and International Relations.

This well-written and comprehensive volume provides an overview of the way Japan's aid to China has developed since 1979.

This book examines the evolution of foreign aid policy in Japan and South Korea, analyzing policy rationales, institutional developments and policy choices. The book searches for new strategies of international development cooperation in an uncertain world. The book compares two countries’ policies in a unique way: pairs of Japanese and Korean scholars examine same policy themes in separate chapters, contrasting differences and similarities. This book will be of great value to scholars of international development cooperation, public policy and East Asian politics.

Assesses the transformation of Japan's foreign aid policies within the context of the nation's changing economic and political relations throughout Asia and beyond.

With the world's second largest economy, China has the capacity to engage in substantial programs of development assistance and government investment in any and all of the emerging-market countries. RAND researchers assessed the scale, trends, and composition of these programs in 93 countries in six regions: Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia.