China's Foreign Aid

Spurred by a lack of comprehensive, publicly available data on China’s aid giving, AidData has collected information on China’s foreign aid from the China Commerce Yearbook (中国商务年鉴) and the Almanac of China’s Foreign Economic Relations & Trade (中国对外经济贸易年间), published annually by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Data are reported for each year between 1990 and 2005, with the exception of 2002, in which year China’s Ministry of Commerce published no project-level data on its foreign aid giving.

Each almanac/yearbook published by China’s Ministry of Commerce reports on several different components of Chinese aid giving. These components include such categories as number of medical teams dispatched (中国派遣医疗队), number of technical assistance projects aided by China (中圈援建成套项目技街合作情况), comprehensive projects assumed/undertaken (对外承担成套项目), and comprehensive projects completed (对外援助成套项目建成). While these reports contain much interesting data, the only category for which project-level data was available was the “comprehensive projects completed” section of each report. Thus the dataset downloadable here, covering 1990 to 2005 (excluding 2002), contains information taken exclusively from the “comprehensive projects completed” section of each year’s almanac.

In reporting only “comprehensive projects completed” from the Ministry of Commerce almanacs from 1990 to 2005, this dataset represents only a small fraction of the total aid given by China. This, however, is the only project-level data that was readily obtainable and presented in a consistent and comprehensive manner over a period of years. AidData intends to supplement this dataset with further project-level data as it becomes available. Downloads: DATA | CODEBOOK

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China's Foreign Aid