The landscape of international development is changing with more actors, more ideas and more voices from different cultural, regional, and historical backgrounds. Are there emerging Asian approaches to development cooperation? If so, what are the key features that distinguish it from the mainstream DAC donors? Has it challenged or complemented the current prevailing approach?

The side event in the HLF4 on “Emerging Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation” tackled the above questions. Panellists from China, India, Vietnam and South Korea shared their views on what they mean by “Asian approaches” (Detailed information for speakers can be found at the end of the report).

“The consensus on development cooperation forged by OECD-DAC has been challenged by emerging non-Western donors.” Dr. Oh-Seok Hyun, President of Korea Development Institute, started his opening remark. The four panellists took a step forward to give meaning to the term of “Asian approaches” from their respective national perspectives. Key points can be summarized as follows:

Development Paradigms: Endowment VS. Bootstrapping Perspective

Dr. Wonhyuk Lim from South Korea argued that Asian donors take a bootstrapping perspective of capacity development that differs substantially from DAC donors’ endowment perspective. Endowment perspective has two core elements: (a) economies lacking “appropriate endowments” (cultural values, “good” institutions, etc.) cannot grow; (b) the state should focus on getting the institutional framework right and then get out of the way letting market forces and individuals play the game. In sharp contrast, bootstrapping approach embraced by Asian donors maintains that initiating growth does not require state-of-the-art institutions. Hence, the challenge is not so much to get growth to start by adopting big-bang reforms, as it to sustain it by devising search networks to detect and mitigate constraints as they emerge.

Priorities in Development: Which Comes First, Economic Growth or Social Sectors?

Professor Li Xiaoyun from China believes that China’s domestic development experiences have informed its own approach to foreign aid programmes in Africa. In the past three decades, China has dramatically reduced poverty by building infrastructure that has built up its own dynamics of development. For this to happen, China has developed its own features of infrastructure building, such as the capacity of long-term planning, co-financing mechanism, and decentralized system of maintenance. Therefore, China believes infrastructure plays a key role in poverty reduction and economic transformation. In contrast, he thought that DAC donors put more emphasis on basic need approach by channelling aid into the social sectors like education, health, and so on.

Self-Reliance: Moving Beyond Charity

Panellists all highlighted that Asian approaches regard aid as “mutual cooperation” rather than charity. It is demand-driven rather than supply-driven. It aims to achieve self-reliant development rather than trapping in aid dependence. As argued by Dr. Sachin Chaturvedi from India, “The crux of SSC is self-reliance and self-help can effectively work only when the recipient countries have clear ideas on goal setting, decision-making, and decision-implementation.” Echoing this point on self-reliance, Dr. Lim from South Korea highlighted that “Korea became a successful aid recipient only after it started its export-oriented industrialization in the 1960s.”

From the above brief summary, we can see that the term of “Asian approaches” is in the making. It moves the debate beyond “non-DAC donors” (a vague term defined by what emerging donors are not) to proactively voice their perspectives with collaborative efforts among themselves.

Such discussion is welcome in a sense that it brings diversity in development thinking and practices that enables recipient countries to have more choices. But it runs the risk of making a dichotomous claim that neglects the diversity within Asian donors and contested opinions within DAC donor club. It may lead us to spend too much time in emphasizing differences rhetorically rather than in exploring what works and what doesn’t empirically.

Therefore, the key point here is not to argue whether Asian approaches are superior to the assumed existing consensus of DAC donors (in fact, the nature of development cooperation is very contested among DAC donors) or whether basic-need approach should give way to Asian approaches to development cooperation aimed to move beyond charity. Such competitive mindset gets us nowhere. What matters is mutual learning between donors with the purpose of more effectivene development cooperation. Hence, the question is not about who moves closer to whom but about what approaches move closer to development effectiveness based on empirical evidence.

Panellists:

Prof. LI Xiaoyu, China Agriculture University

Dr. Sachin Chaturvedi, Research and Information System for Developing Countries

Mr. Dang Huy Dong, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, Vietnam

Dr. Wonhyuk Lim, Korean Development Institute

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