Prof. Shahar Hameiri1, Prof. Lee Jones1
1University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, QLD, Australia
Biography:
Shahar Hameiri is Professor of International Politics and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. His work mainly examines security and development issues in East Asia and the Pacific. His recent co-authored books include The Locked-Up Country: Learning the Lessons from Australia’s COVID-19 Response (UQP, 2023), and Fractured China: How State Transformation Is Shaping China’s Rise (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He is also co-editor, with Toby Carroll and Lee Jones, of The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development under Hyperglobalisation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Abstract:
China’s rise as a major development financing provider is widely seen as challenging traditional donor states’ influence over recipients and the norms and institutions of global development that they have established. Amid intensifying geopolitical rivalry, now often called a new or second Cold War, some argue that traditional donors are adopting Chinese-style practices to compete with China for the allegiance of developing countries. This article supports this thesis but argues further that Chinese practices are also converging with traditional donors’. Moreover, this convergence is on a less competitive middle-ground that will likely be far worse for developing countries than the logic of geopolitical competition might suggest. Rather than mobilising additional resources, both sides are retrenching, leaving recipients worse off. This reflects each model’s limits: for China, recipients’ declining capacity to repay their commercial loans; for traditional donors, reduced willingness to dedicate fiscal resources to aid and reliance on private finance.