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How Much Yuan Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Chinese Foreign Aid and Lobbying at the United Nations
Dr Su-Hyun Lee Assistant Professor and Coordinator of MSc (International Political Economy) Programme
Dr Su-Hyun Lee
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This is a research project in collaboration with Prof Byungwon Woo at Yonsei University, South Korea. Does China use its foreign aid to buy supports from non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)? In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent China utilizes its foreign aid politically at the UNSC. We argue that China disburses more aid to non-permanent members of the Security Council, especially to those who seem neutral a priori: compared to countries expected to support the Chinese position and countries expected to support the US position, those swing countries who can switch their position in support of China and the US are the ones who would witness the largest aid increase during their service at the UNSC. Using Chinese aid data between 2000 and 2014 by AidData, we demonstrate that Chinese aid increases in general when a country is elected to serve at the UNSC and especially when a country is deemed politically neutral between China and the US
| Theme: | General / Country and Region Studies / International Political Economy / Regionalism and Multilateralism |
| Region: | Africa / Central Asia / South Asia / Southeast Asia and ASEAN |
| Entity: | CMS |
