Analyze the changes in the
Japanese ODA policy towards China since 1979
Graduate School of
Media and Governance
Rei Watanabe
Contents
2. Overview of Japan’s ODA
3. Changing Japan’s ODA towards China
4. New ways of
aid giving
5. Conclusion
1.
Introduction
The purposes of this essay are to analyze the
historical facts of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA)
and make its problems clear. In addition, based on this analysis, I would like
to suggest a new solution. The essay will focus on the ODA towards China because China is the single largest recipient of the ODA
and it is the most controversial recipient.
ODA is defined by the Development Assistance Committee
(DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For
the DAC, aid qualifies as ODA on three criteria: a) It has to be undertaken by
official agencies; b) It has to have the promotion of economic development and
welfare as its main objectives; c) It has to have a grant element of 25 per
cent or more (Cassen, 1986).
The essay consists of three parts. In the first part,
I am going to give an overview of Japan’s ODA. Secondly, I will focus on the ODA
towards China and explore some problems. Finally, I will
suggest new ways of aid giving. This time I could not refer Japanese
and Chinese publications, that is why the argument has some limitations.
2.
Overview
of Japan’s ODA
According to DAC, Japan had been the world’s largest donor of
Official Development Assistance (ODA) between 1993 and 2000. In 2002, Japan was the second largest donor country.
Although Japan has contributed to the world development
as a top donor, the ODA has been criticized not only internationally but also
domestically. There are a lot of reasons for the criticism. To understand the
criticism, firstly we need to examine an overview of the features of the ODA.
Japan is a small country without raw materials
so that it is necessary for it to trade to survive. As a trading nation, Japan needs to seek trading partners. In this
point, because developing countries have an amount of non-exploitable
resources such as oil, coal and gas, Japan has used the ODA to secure these resources. In
addition the Japanese constitution is not allowed to possess an army. Therefore
Japan can only contribute to the world
development and peace thorough economic assistance. In other words the ODA is
an important diplomatic tool for Japan.
Compared with other DAC countries, the ODA
has some striking characteristics. For instance, the ODA has mainly focused on
building infrastructures. Moreover it is carried out by the central government
and involvement of civil society is limited.
Because of these characteristics, it has been
criticized as placing too much emphasis on infrastructural assistance and
people do not go to developing countries to assist. Especially the ODA towards China bears the brunt of these criticisms
because China is the single largest recipient country.
This essay will focus on the ODA towards China and analyze the problems resulting from
this.
3.
Changing
Japan’s ODA towards China
In 1979 Japan started to give the ODA to China. There were some emotional and practical
reasons. Firstly, after World War U, China did not demand compensation for the
war reparations to Japan, so that the Japanese government considered repaying
to give economic assistance for China’s attitude. Secondly, on one hand, China is a huge country with raw materials and
energy resources to export overseas. At that time however, China did not have fundamental infrastructures
and technology to exploit these resources. On the other hand, Japan is a small country without raw materials
and Japan had faced the oil crisis in Arabic countries and
needed to find another way to get energy supply. Therefore it seems that Japan and China had common interests to Japan’s ODA.
Japan had given multi-years aid packages
coordinated with the Chinese five-year economic plans. The first yen loan, was
of 331 billion yen, was given between 1979 and 1984, and it focused on transportation
infrastructures such as building railways, roads and ports. The second yen
loan, between 1984 and 1989, was 540 billion yen, also given to contribute to
basic infrastructures.
From the beginning of 1990s, Japan has changed its ODA contents towards China because in the 1980s the ODA had mainly
focused on infrastructure assistance, and it had been criticized by another
donor countries and international organizations. For that reason, Japan needed to reconsider about its ODA policy.
In 1992, an ODA charter was adopted in an attempt to improve ODA quality
(Fujisaki, 1996). In the ODA charter, Japan expressed that its ODA focus on
environmental preservation. In the same year, at the UN conference on
Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Japan announced the goal to expand bilateral and
multilateral aid to the environment (Drifte, 1998).
However whereas China has achieved remarkable economic growth in
the past 20 years especially in the coastal area, it has caused environmental
problems. Although the Chinese government regards environmental protection as a
vital task (MOFA, 2001), it is difficult to cope with both economic growth and
environmental protection at the same time. Furthermore since the environmental
problems are global issues, which spread beyond boundaries, Chinese
environmental problems affect neighboring countries including Japan. As a result, the contents of Japan’s ODA towards China have changed from infrastructural oriented
to environmental oriented.
In addition, there is perception gap toward Japan’s ODA between Japan and China. That is Chinese tendency is to recognize
the Japan’s ODA as atonement for Japan’s wartime aggression. Japan has already sufficiently paid for the
behavior, any further economic assistance does not relate to war compensation
(Kawai, 2001). In that point, Chinese environmental problems are common
problems for both of them, so that changing the ODA policy is inevitable.
4.
New
ways of aid giving
In the 1960s Japan had also experienced severe environmental
problems such as air and water pollution similar problems to those experienced
by China. At that period, Japanese local governments had taken
the initiative to deal with these problems because the contamination affected
ordinary people’s lives. For that reason, in the area of environmental
protection Japanese local governments have high knowledge and well skilled
experts.
If the local governments can participate in overseas
assistance through the ODA scheme, not only they can make the best use of the knowledge
of environmental protection in developing countries but also improve the
quality of the ODA. Although it is difficult for local governments to
participate in the ODA under the present system, some local governments have
already started international environmental cooperation at the local level.
Moreover, Kitakyushu, one of Japanese local government, had
experienced severe environmental pollution, succeeded in using ODA budged to
local environmental cooperation for Dalian-city in China. This is an important precedent for the
ODA. If we can analyze the decision-making process of Kitakyushu-Dalian environmental cooperation and make it a model case
of participation of local governments in the ODA, the ODA can avoid being
criticized.
5.
Conclusion
In the essay I have discussed the problems of Japan’s ODA, focussing
especially on the ODA towards China. Although there have been a lot of
problems, it might be difficult to solve these problems simultaneously.
However, if the Japanese local governments can participate in the ODA scheme, I
believe that we can make the ODA more worthwhile.
Even though in the essay, I could not analyze the
Kitakyushu-Dalian environmental cooperation
specifically, in future research using Japanese and Chinese publications I will
try to do so. Moreover, I really feel that in order to understand the
decision-making process I need to interview the people who were involved in the
cooperation, not only in Japan, but also in China.
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