Podcast appearances and mentions of deborah brautigam

Tamar Gutner, associate professor of international affairs at American University's School of International Service, leads the conversation on the international financial architecture. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today's discussion of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you for joining us. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Tamar Gutner with us to discuss the international financial architecture. Dr. Gutner is an associate professor at American University's School of International Service, and expert on the performance of international organizations and their roles in global governance. In 2019, she held a CFR Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the International Monetary Fund's Independent Evaluation Office. She is the author of International Organizations in World Politics, published by CQ Press; and Banking on the Environment: Multilateral Development Banks and Their Environmental Performance in Central and Eastern Europe, published by MIT Press. And she recently completed a book manuscript on the birth and design of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and its role in the landscape of development banks. So, Dr. Gutner, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought we could begin by having you outline for us the various change-related proposals and activities facing the World Bank, other multilateral development banks, and the International Monetary Fund. Just a small question, but—(laughter)—over to you. GUTNER: Thank you. Thank you, Irina, for introducing me, and thank you for having me as part of this seminar. I think these seminars are just a fantastic way for scholars, professors, students, and others to engage with these important issues, and I'm really excited to see so many people from around the world and professors and students and I see some colleagues in the audience. So I'm really looking forward to engaging with all of you. Right, so this is a critical time for the IMF and the World Bank and other development banks because their importance has been heightened by the need for them to respond to the various crises and challenges that we're facing now. Many of these, as you know, are quite difficult to solve, like climate change. And the world is also dealing with the ongoing economic and social and health repercussions from the pandemic, the repercussions of Russia's invasion of Ukraine including food insecurity. And we're also living in a time when a lot more countries are at high risk of debt distress, and it's a time when it's becoming clear that progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals are stalling. We also have major geopolitical tensions, which is an issue as well. So the IMF and the World Bank are leading international organizations in this scenario today. The IMF has been called the center of the global financial safety net. And the World Bank, meanwhile, is the leading multilateral source of climate finance, and is also playing a huge role in responding to various development challenges that impact its borrowing countries. And also, the regional development banks are addressing these issues as well. So for people who support multilateralism, there's widespread agreement that no one state or actor can solve any of these cross-border issues on their own. And that means we're living in a time when cooperation and multilateral action is absolutely essential, and these people agree we need more to be done to address these issues. But we're also living in a time when many states have inward-looking politics, where there's rising nationalism and populism. And this has produced people and leaders who either don't see the value of international organizations (IOs) like the World Bank and IMF or they see them as contrary to national interests. The IOs themselves—the international organizations themselves—also struggle with relevance sometimes and mixed performance sometimes. And the IMF and World Bank constantly face criticism. They're always being criticized. But I think one important thing to remember is that there's no consensus among the critics. There are always people who want them to do more. There are people who want them to be abolished. So when you're exploring the kind of critiques of these organizations it's important to keep that in mind, just they're coming from different actors and they have different thoughts. And, meanwhile, these institutions themselves, they have—it's tricky for them because they have a tough job. They have to be responsive to their member-state shareholders, who don't always agree with each other. They have to try to be responsive to other stakeholders, for example civil society actors; they don't always agree with each other or with their member states. And so these institutions are constantly being pulled in different directions and they have to navigate that. To their credit, they do try to adapt and adjust, not always effectively. And there's also variation in what they've done well and haven't done well. But it's precisely at this time today with these international crises that the Bank and the Fund and the other MDBs—multilateral development banks—have to try to do better. And what I want to do is offer you a brief overview of some of their efforts to do so and some of the challenges that face these efforts. So I'll begin with the World Bank, which is in the midst of a process to figure out how to update its mission, its vision, its strategy, and its operating model. And this is a process that has been driven by shareholders, including the G20 members, and lots of other consultations. Last fall—well, first of all, I want to say there are a number of proposals on the table on how to reform the World Bank and other MDBs, and they have in common calling for these institutions to do a lot more to address climate change and other global public goods. And some of them call for more effort to better engage with private capital and to rethink how these institutions, which are in part banking institutions, how they can maximize the impact of their capital. So last fall the World Bank embarked on what's been called an evolution roadmap to think through ideas for what should be done. This came out late last year amid calls for the Bank to be bigger and better. And this initiative was launched by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen a year ago, and she led an effort with other non-borrowing and borrowing countries to call for the whole multilateral development bank system to evolve. As she put it, the world has changed and we need these vital institutions to change along with it. So the idea underlying all of these proposals is for MDBs to be more innovative and efficient. India made MDB evolution a priority in its presidency of the G20 this year, and there have been different expert panels that have also called for radically reformed and strengthened multilateral development banks. So what's interesting for this audience is this evolution roadmap process will eventually turn into the World Bank's strategy, its corporate strategy, and the latest version of it will be discussed next week at the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Marrakesh. So if you're interested in following that, keep your eyes on the news. And the latest version is seeking approval for measures that will allow the World Bank to boost its lending by $100 billion. So this—the document circulating now for the development—the Joint Ministerial Committee of the World Bank and IMF—and we'll see what happens with it. And I'm happy to talk more about the document itself in the Q&A. These efforts to reform the World Bank are also impacting other regional development banks. So, for example, the Asian Development Bank recently announced it, too, will lend an additional $100 billion over the next ten years by relaxing some of its risk rules for its banking, how it manages its assets, without jeopardizing its triple-A credit rating. The IMF also has been trying to change and adapt in recent years. It's not directly part of this evolution framework that's focusing on MDBs, but the IMF has really turned attention to climate change and also to gender and inequality. And it's essentially pushing forward a kind of a slow change in thinking where economists, and finance ministers, and central bank leaders have realized that these issues are essential to macroeconomic stability. So climate change has become a more visible focus of the IMF's work, its work in surveillance, its capacity development activities, and its general work with countries. Its first strategy for mainstreaming gender was adopted in July 2022. And, like the World Bank, it has also created a number of mechanisms to respond to the pandemic. So it has a new resilience and sustainability trust. And the goal of it is to help low-income member states to address climate change and issues like pandemic preparedness. And it also has a new food shock window to offer emergency financing for countries facing food insecurity as a result of everything going on today. So this is—it's interesting to watch both of these institutions. The IMF typically has a harder time changing because it's a more rigid, set in its ways organization. But it, too—it's not your grandmother's IMF anymore. But all of these efforts are going to face their own sets of challenges. And I want to briefly highlight a few of them before we have our Q&A. So in the World Bank's roadmap, which is also being called a new playbook, the question is: Is it a zero-sum game to balance more focus on global public goods like climate change with individual countries' own development priorities? And there are many people who say, no problem. Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the IMF, when talking about this balancing issue, she said: Well, we can chew gum and walk at the same time. But these goals may have areas of overlap, where a country's own development issues do coincide with these global public goods, but there may be areas where they do not. And that's something that has to be worked out. There's also some criticism in civil society and other actors about asking the multilateral banks to do much more to engage with the private sector. First of all, this idea has been around for a while, this idea of turning billions and trillions, for example, was part of the 2015 UN Financing for Development Conference. And it hasn't really come through. So it's a difficult issue to do. There's going to be more work on it. But some organizations actually are concerned about potential negative effects of prioritizing incentives for private finance to provide co-financing to development efforts, because private sector goals are not always the same as public goals, right? So there's some areas of tension. And finally, I just want to flag that all of these organizations are calling for more collaboration. Collaboration is almost the magic wand that will help all these efforts to work out better. And, in fact, if you look at the IMF's new annual report, which was just published, it lists on its front page “committed to collaboration.” But, in fact, it's not that easy for these organizations to collaborate. And I'm happy to break that down a little bit more. And so this great emphasis on something that can be difficult will be something that these organizations have to grapple with. I'm happy to talk about more of the issues in our Q&A, but I think I should stop here and open it up to questions or comments. FASKIANOS: Thank you, Tammi. That was fantastic. So we're going to go to all of you for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) OK, so I'm going to take the first question from Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome. Q: Thank you. Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome. I'm a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. And I'm just wondering about this financial architecture that is much criticized, as you said. And I'm wondering the extent to which the criticism informs new decisions that are taken. So the criticisms about people who say the organization should be abolished is coming from the Global South, where there's been feeling since the 1970s that these organizations are not sufficiently sympathetic or understanding of the challenges faced by the countries that had unsustainable debt, and are still in a deeper state of unsustainable debt today. So how is the global architecture on these—in these organizations dealing with these challenges? I heard for the first time, like, in the last five years—Lagarde, I think it was—that said, oh, we made mistakes in some of the advice that we were giving. So who pays for those mistakes? People's lives are damaged, economies are wrecked. And you know, so what are the—what's the good of these changes, really? GUTNER: Yeah, thank you so much for that question, because that's a really good reflection on some of the harsh criticism that these institutions face. And I also would not be someone who says they do everything right, because they don't. But it has been interesting to watch some of the ways that they've evolved. So, for example, they do interact much more with civil society than they used to. I mean, it used to be in the old days when the IMF and World Bank had their annual meetings, civil society actors would protest outside on the street in Washington, DC. And I would tell my students, feel free to go down there but please maybe try not to get arrested, you know? So there were—there were very large protests. Now, when they have the annual meeting, civil society actors are in—are part of it. They're engaged in seminars. They're engaged in discussion. The institutions have strengthened some of their accountability measures, although I could argue some of them are also still weak. But there have been changes. So for example, the IMF now addresses and thinks about social protection, which it didn't used to do, and social safety nets, which it didn't used to do in the past. So you can argue that these changes aren't enough, and they're too late, and it's still harmful. But I think there is evidence that they do try to evolve and adapt, maybe not perfectly. And also, it's really difficult to change a huge institution. It's like turning a large ship. You know, it doesn't happen quickly. But the narrative today is different from the past. I mean, there is—there is more focus on climate change, for example. Which you can argue some countries, it's not really their priority. But even that's changing. More countries, more developing countries, are realizing that issues of climate change are related to them, whether it's through natural disasters, you know, hurricanes, floods, mud—you know, all of this. So I think it's—I think this criticism is still out there. And it exists. The institutions are imperfect. But they do—they do slowly try to adjust and adapt. And if you dig into it, if you go into detail, you'll find that they do a better job in some issues than others, in some countries than others, in some periods of time than others. So as a scholar I would argue that you—it's hard to make a blanket statement about them without kind of unpacking, you know, specific cases and over time. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next written question from Jon-Paul Maddaloni, a military professor at the U.S. Naval War College: For the World Bank, what is the definition of creditworthy? Is this a debt-to-GDP ratio? Is there a standard here that may be part of the developing world grievance against the World Bank? GUTNER: So there are complex ways of assessing that. But basically, one of the major ones is to decide if a country is eligible for IBRD loans, which are International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the main part of the World Bank, which are loans that have to be repaid. And if a country is relatively less creditworthy or poor countries can access grants, or no-interest loans, or concessional funding from the World Bank's arm that's called IDA, the International Development Association—or, Agency. (Laughs.) I just—I just call it IDA. So if you're—if you're able to access IDA funding, you're relatively less creditworthy. The World Bank also has other facilities to offer—both the bank and also the IMF—capacity development, which is just money given for technical assistance. And those are the different categories for the World Bank. So countries can change category. So if a country becomes more economically stronger, it can graduate from IDA concessional financing. If it becomes weaker, it can access that financing. And there are some countries which can get a blend. In other words, they're creditworthy enough to be able to take some amount of loans, but not enough so that all of their financing can be a loan form. So these are some of the ways that the World Bank responds to different categories of creditworthiness. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I'm going to take the next question from Fordham's International Political Economy and Development Program. They have a raised hand. If you can just say who you are. (Laughter.) Q: Thank you for being with us today. I'm Genevieve, part of the Fordham IPED Program. My question is, what are some specific examples of how a country's national political landscape and private interests cause these setbacks for cross-sectoral collaboration in these development banking efforts? And how do these large banking institutions work around corruption, for example? GUTNER: I'm sorry. Can you repeat the first part about collaboration—cross-sectoral collaboration? Q: Yeah. What are some specific examples of how a country's national political landscape and private interests cause setbacks for cross-sectoral collaboration for these development banks? And then we could take corruption as an example. GUTNER: So I'm not 100 percent sure what you mean by the—by the cross-sectoral collaboration. When I'm focusing on collaboration, or when the narrative is focusing on collaboration, it's really focusing more on collaboration between, for example, the World Bank and IMF. How do they collaborate? And the answer to that is, they haven't collaborated well for almost eighty years. But that's not—what I think you're asking is, what happens between these institutions and the national level? Well, one issue—the issue of corruption has become much more widely discussed in both the World Bank and the IMF. In the past, it was seen as a domestic political issue, which is really outside their articles of agreement. They're not supposed to get involved in these domestic political issues. But there's much more awareness today that corruption—for example, in the IMF—corruption impacts a government's health—the fiscal health, their ability to have money to spend on development. And the same is true for the World Bank. So there's much more attention on these issues. The institutions still have to navigate carefully so that they don't look like they're getting involved in politics, even though they can't really avoid it. But so corruption is much higher on the priority list. And it can impact a country's ability to get funding from either institutions. So from the World Bank, and they have—they have lists of companies they won't work with in procurement, for example, who are barred from engaging in procurement. And it's part of discussions. It shows up in the partnership—the framework documents that both countries produce for individual countries. So a kind of a—this is a long way to say, it's on the radar and it matters. But a lot of the collaboration issues are related to how the institutions work with each other. But also in country, I should add, that in some countries the donors collaborate on the ground. So they meet together and they try to make sure they're not overlapping. There's—it doesn't always work very well. You know, in some cases it works better than others. But for the institutions to collaborate more with each other, they have faced many challenges in doing that. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Joshua McKeown, associate provost and director of the international education at State University of New York at Oswego: For context, how much lending does the World Bank do in comparison with regional development banks? GUTNER: Well, I guess it depends. I don't have all that data at my fingertips, but the World Bank in the last—in—let's see, I do have the World Bank data at my fingertips. Let me just pull it up. See where I had it. The World Bank in its current annual report, the IBRD committed $38 and a half billion in 2023. IDA committed $34 billion. The regional banks are much smaller, so the World Bank tends to be the largest. But there's also a lot of variation across the regional banks as well. Now it's important to say that they will often cofinance projects with each other. So the regional banks will engage with the World Bank, and they'll have shared projects, and they'll work together. There are times where they also will compete with each other on occasion. They might both be interested in funding an airport—building an airport somewhere. And one of them may offer more attractive terms than the other. But the competition is not kind of a serious problem, because basically wherever you look in the world, there's almost an infinite demand for infrastructure finance. You know, show me a city that doesn't need a new metro, or the roads repaired, right? So there's a lot of demand out there for these banks to be able to do what they do. And but that has to be tempered with the, on the other side, how much debt can an individual country take on? And that's where we're seeing more serious problems today. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Samia Abdulle from Professor Fazal's class. And she is at the University of Minnesota: How has COVID-19 renewed the debate about the World Bank's role in international development? GUTNER: That's a great question, because when it comes to crisis, member states turn to these institutions right away. And this is a little separate from your question, but before the global financial crisis, for example, the IMF and the World Bank had seen their demand for their services drop dramatically. There were questions about the legitimacy of the IMF. Then the global financial crisis hit and, boom, they were kind of the go-to organizations to help respond to these issues. So the World Bank and the IMF both responded pretty rapidly to the pandemic. And they each came up with new facilities, they got money out the door quickly, they relaxed some of their conditions. So they both had a kind of a robust response. Now, there are people who are saying, well, it was not enough. It should have been more. But, you know, they did a lot. And in an emergency situation, also, you have to remember, they all had to work at home as well. So everybody was working at home. Nobody could travel, but yet they got a lot of money out the door quickly, in different kinds of ways. And I think what we're going to have to revisit down the road is, did any of that money disappear? You know, where—was there accountability for all this money, because it was moved out the door so quickly. And the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, would say: Just save your receipts. (Laughs.) Just save your receipts. But that's going to be something to see, what happened with this money, where did it actually go, how did accountability work? But the World Bank alone got $30 billion—it dispersed $30 billion in fifteen months at the beginning of the pandemic in emergency support. So they really did step up. And whether it was enough or not is a matter of opinion. But they moved—they did move quickly. And I should just add, since you asked about—I just want to add one thing. The World Bank was involved in getting people access to vaccines, helping weak health infrastructures in countries, and all kinds of issues related to the pandemic. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. So I'm going to take the next written question from Yiagadeesen Samy, who's the director of the School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Canada: You already covered the AIIB in your opening remarks, and we will be circulating this transcript in the video later, but let's look at the second part of the question. Can you comment a little bit on whether the proposed changes to MDBs are a reaction to China's growing influence? And if so, what your views are about the changing geopolitical economic dynamics? GUTNER: It's so great people are asking these simple questions. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: I know! GUTNER: Yes. FASKIANOS: Keeping you on your toes! (Laughs.) GUTNER: Yes. So let me preface by saying this: China has different strategies in development banking. On one side, you have the AIIB, for example. On the other side, the Belt and Road Initiative. The AIIB is not—in my research, it's cut from the same cloth as other development banks. It's not a threat. It's a part of the landscape of development banks. It's part of the community. It was designed by an international group of experts. In fact, the person who wrote the AIIB's articles of agreement was an American. And the person who designed the AIIB's environmental and social framework was an American. So it was a—it was a real international effort. And in fact, the World Bank helped the AIIB get set up. So the World Bank volunteered staff and gave the AIIB advice on things like vacation policy and office furniture. This is the Beijing office of the World Bank. And the World Bank even ran the AIIB treasury at the beginning, and it cofinanced projects. So the AIIB is cut from the same cloth as development banks. Now, it does have some differences. It's has—it's much smaller. It has a staff under four hundred. The World Bank is ten thousand, for example. And so there are some people who think it might have spurred the World Bank to pay more attention to doing more on infrastructure, which it had moved away from a little bit because that's the AIIB's focus. But the Belt and Road is something different. It's a bilateral initiative. It's an umbrella for Chinese financial institutions to lend money for infrastructure. It's not actually an organization. It's just an umbrella term. And there are differences, because the banks lending under the Belt and Road, Chinese institutions, they don't follow global norms on environmental and social framework, on safeguards. They're not transparent. We can't—we don't know how the loan is structured. They don't report the lending numbers to the Paris Club, for example. So there's a real difference between China's strategy in the AIIB and China's strategy in the Belt and Road, which reflects the different natures. There's not one Chinese strategy. So I think, in a way, the existing development banks help the AIIB more, and their staff help the AIIB more. The Belt and Road is a separate thing. But what I think is going to be interesting is to see if the borders, the boundaries between what is done following global norms, and rules, and procedures, if there's any kind of crossover with what's inside those borders and what's outside those borders. So for example, the AIIB is hosting a facility to help countries better design infrastructure projects that might be undertaken under Belt and Road. And so we just have to keep an eye on that. But it's not—it's not a bleak or black and white picture, the way some people describe it. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. A good follow up question from Steven Shinkel, who's the military professor of national security affairs at U.S. Naval War College: Can you compare the relative use of concessional loans between the World Bank and China? What about loan forgiveness, especially in regions such as Africa and South America? GUTNER: Right. So most of the Chinese lending under Belt and Road is not concessional. Most of it is not concessional. And often interest rates are higher than a comparative loan, even from the IBRD, even non-concessional lending. So they will often charge higher interest rates, but they will have less conditionality. So a country trying to decide who to take a loan from will have to weigh that. Do we want a lower interest rate loan from the World Bank that might have more policy conditionality, we might have to adjust our policy, we might have to think about environmental impacts more? Or do we want a slightly more expensive loan from a Chinese lending institution, but it doesn't have any strings attached? So that's kind of the part of the decision-making that borrowers have to go through. On debt—the second part was on, I'm sorry, the question disappeared. On debt? FASKIANOS: Oh, sorry. Yes, the second question is: What about loan forgiveness, especially in regions such as Africa and South America? GUTNER: Well, that's something that's being widely discussed right now, because Chinese institutions haven't been as comfortable about that, or as used to that. And they're—you know, they're being pushed by other institutions. Hey, you have to take a haircut too. We all have to—we all have to do that. There is a little bit of that going on. But it's something—I mean, if you read the article suggested in the email about this talk by Deborah Brautigam, she really unpacks that in great detail. And she makes an argument that there's some kind of learning and give and take that's happening and we need to see more of it. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Next question from Lindsey McCormack, who's a graduate student at CUNY Baruch College: There's a lot of activity in the U.S. and Europe with new disclosure standards on climate and social impacts of corporations. How do the multilateral development banks relate to this activity? Are they seeing more pressure to discuss—oh, sorry—disclose climate and social impacts of their lending? GUTNER: Yes. (Laughs.) Yes. Now, they already do a lot. They already have environmental and social safeguards. And they've all moved away from funding oil and gas, or mostly oil and some gas. So they're moving away from that. And they're all working together, actually—I mean, I think it's an important example of networking—of the network of MDBs—that they're all moving toward meeting—complying with the Paris Agreement and showing how they're doing that. Now, some of this is how they measure things, and how they label things, and how they account for things. So there's still some debate on whether they're doing enough. But there's, for sure, pressure from NGOs and others. And the banks are moving in that direction. And they're—they're proudly touting how their projects comply. A high percentage of their projects are complying with the Paris Agreement. But there's still some interesting criticism coming out. So, for example, there was a recent report by a German NGO that said the World Bank's private sector lending arm, the IFC—that the IFC was making loans for trade support where that money might go into oil and gas. But you can't tell, right? So they were calling for more transparency on how the IMF is—how the IFC is doing trade credits. So that's something that's very recent. You can look that up and read more about it. FASKIANOS: Just to follow on, how are the multilateral development banks structured? And how effective do you think they are? GUTNER: Structured in terms of what? I mean, I can talk generally in case—so they— FASKIANOS: Yeah, I think corporate structure. GUTNER: So they have—they all have board of governors, which are all the top relevant officials of their member states, typically the finance minister or the central bank head. And they meet once or twice a year. And they make the big decisions. So one thing that's important to realize is a lot of these countries are members of a lot of development bank—there's a lot of overlap in membership. And that's also a way to cross-fertilize ideas, and policies, and things like that. They all have boards of directors, which are more engaged with the day-to-day business. And the—voting is based on your shareholding in the development bank. And that is based broadly on your economic strength. So the economically stronger companies have—stronger countries have a larger share and more voting power. And then you have the presidents of these organizations that have an important leadership role. And then you have the staff. So that's basically the structure of these development banks. And meeting next week are the board of governors and the directors in Marrakech for the World Bank and IMF. And you can see how they engage with staff and how they help set the strategic tone for the institutions. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And I just want to remind everybody to raise your hand if you want to ask a question. Everybody's a little bit shy today, or else Tammi's been so thorough that you have no questions. (Laughter.) But I have more questions. But first, I'm going to go to Don Habibi, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington: With yesterday's stock market plunge and political instability in the U.S., how much concern should we have over the multitrillion-dollar national debt? GUTNER: So that's not an issue that directly impacts the international financial institutions, the IMF, and the World Bank, right now. I mean, the U.S. is the largest shareholder of both, and they both—or, the World Bank has a AAA credit rating. So it's not really—we might be concerned over national debt, but so far it's not having a big impact on the dollar. So far, it's not having a big impact on investment. So there's always kind of some concern, but it's not—it's not translating into anything that's making people nervous about how these organizations operate. But, you know, one place to look for an answer, I'll tell you this, is when the IMF does surveillance, it does—which are its reports on the economic health of individual member states. It does these surveillance reports even on the rich countries. It does them for everyone. So I would suggest you look for the latest article for surveillance report that the IMF has done on the United States, and see what it has to say about concerns about debt. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. You recently completed a book manuscript on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Some policymakers and scholars have argued it is a threat to the World Bank. Can you talk about if you agree with that or disagree? GUTNER: Oh, right. So I answered a little bit of that earlier, actually, which is: I don't think it's a threat because I think it's cut from the same cloth as these other development banks in terms of it has similar policies, it has similar governance rules. The World Bank—it's signed MOUs, memoranda of understanding, with all these other development banks. It cooperates with them. It cofinances projects with them. So I think the narrative of the AIIB being a threat is not correct. Could something change in the future? Who knows. But there has been a recent scandal at the AIIB. And we don't know how that will yet be resolved, where this past summer the Canadian director of communications resigned dramatically, suddenly, arguing that Communist Party committees were somehow involved in the work of the bank. And we—so, Canada froze its membership. So that's a bit of a scandal and a crisis at the AIIB. And Canada is doing its own report on what happened. So I kind of think we have to see what comes out of that report. If Canada decided to leave the AIIB, would it impact any other members? Too early to say. But so far, there's nothing directly threatening about its work. It's walked and talked and behaved like other development banks. It does have some differences. It has a nonresident board, which was seen as a cost-saving measure. You know, why have all these people sit around and cost a lot of money? But there are some civil society actors who think that that could produce less accountability. If the board is not there, you know, the bank has more kind of autonomy to do—more independence. So there are some differences. But so far, it's been just another member of the multilateral development bank system. FASKIANOS: Thank you. All right. We have more hands raised, which I'm very excited about. Tanisha Fazal, who is the Weinstein chair of international studies at University of Richmond: You mentioned the difficulties of collaboration between IMF and the World Bank. Can you please elaborate on what you see as the primary obstacles to collaboration between MDBs? GUTNER: Yes. I'm happy to talk about that. So that was the topic of my year—my Council on Foreign Relations fellowship at the International Monetary Fund's Independent Evaluation Office. And we were evaluating Bank-Fund collaboration. And I was part of the overall evaluation, which you can find online. And I also wrote a separate paper on the history of Bank-Fund collaboration. And I found it to be absolutely fascinating, because these two institutions were created together at the Bretton Woods Conference. And they're called the Bretton Woods twins. They're literally across the street from each other. There's an underground passage that connects the two. They interact all the time. They have a joint orchestra. I don't know if anybody knew that. (Laughs.) They used to share a library. So there's a lot of—if any two organizations should be able to work closely together, it's these two, right? This should be your best case, and yet they've struggled for their entire existence. And I think one of the obstacles is that over time their issues have overlapped. So an example of that is today, when the IMF is doing more on climate change, gender, and inequality, which traditionally is the work of the Bank. So their work has kind of—over time, given the issues facing the world, it's kind of naturally overlapped. And what I found that was very interesting is in over twenty-five different formal attempts the two institutions produced to collaborate with each other—memos and announcements by the heads of the institutions—for decades, what they meant by collaboration was turf delineation. Collaboration meant you stay out of my territory. (Laughs.) I don't think of that as collaboration. It's working together on a common objective, right? So that was what they meant by it, and for many years what they—what the solution was, that the institution that's not in charge of this issue should yield to the judgment of the other one—the yield to the judgment one. So I think turf overlap has been a problem. But even when they make an effort, often they have different incentives, they have different budget cycles, they have different—you know, it's just not that easy. And the IMF's latest strategy for collaboration has been when IMF staff encounter an issue that they don't have expertise in, they should leverage the expertise of the World Bank and other partners. Well, that, to me, sounds like one-way collaboration, which is an oxymoron, right? That if the IMF needs help, it should call the IMF and get help—I mean, call the World Bank and get help. But for the World Bank, they might be busy. (Laughs.) So those kinds of challenges persist. There have been times where they do create a truly collaborative effort, like the HIPC Initiative, or the FSAPs, or the PRSP—sorry for all the acronyms—but where they—where they have a shared work program and shared guidance and shared expectations. Those have tended to work better than big umbrella exhortations by the leaders saying: Collaborate! You know, do more collaboration. Those have tended to work better, but they also run into individual problems. So really, the upshot is, even though you would expect collaboration to be the easiest and make most sense between these two institutions, in fact, it's often been a struggle. And some people found, when I mentioned the IMF's resilience trust, that's something that would normally have been undertaken by the World Bank. So they have not—they have had challenges collaborating, and those continue. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And I need to correct the record, my apologies. So that question was from Tanisha Fazal, who is an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. So the next question is from Sandra Joireman, who is the Weinstein chair of international studies at University of Richmond. So my apologies. So this this question is from Sandra: Some of the previous efforts to address the environmental impacts of certain projects were ineffective. Do you think new efforts to address the environment and climate challenge change will be better? If so, why? GUTNER: So I'm guessing you're referring to the World Bank? And, yes, there's a whole long history of the Bank addressing environmental issues. And it really started in the 1980s, when NGOs identified projects that had gone horribly wrong and caused enormous environmental degradation. Like the Polonoroeste highway in Brazil. It was a famous—infamous example. And the Narmada dam in India. These are infamous examples. But when you look over the years, there have been improvements to what kinds of things the Bank can lend money to, how strong the environmental and social safeguards are. So when I look at the whole history of the World Bank and environment, I basically see it is not a one-way trajectory, and as forward or backward. I see it as more zigzag steps, some forward steps, some backward steps, some forward steps, some backward steps. So overall, because climate change is becoming one—it's about to become a major part of the Bank's mission and vision. So before it was shared prosperity and poverty reduction, and now it's going to—if it's all approved next week—it will be shared prosperity, poverty reduction, and a livable planet. So climate change is kind of moving the front row and center. And that will make it harder for the Bank to fund projects that can be criticized. It will make it much more important that it follows these solid environmental and social framework rules. So I think it's a move in the right direction. But as I mentioned earlier, we're still seeing criticism from NGO about things slipping through the cracks, like trade finance, right? Or another area that's weak is the World Bank—the IFC and the World Bank will sometimes lend money to financial intermediaries. So it's like—it's like lending money to a local bank that then lends it out for something else. And there's been less oversight about how that money is on lent, and whether that can go for something that's damaging to climate change or the environment. So they're moving in the right direction. I think there's been progress. I think there's been backward steps and forward steps over the whole arc of the World Bank's efforts in this area. And I think there's still going to be some criticism as they address some of these areas where there's slippage. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question, a raised hand from Sheri Fink. So, Sheri, if you can say who you are and accept the unmute prompt. Q: Oh, I'm sorry. I think I pressed the wrong button. I didn't mean to raise my hand. Sorry about that. FASKIANOS: OK. No problem. All right. I will take the next question from Eric Muddiman, master's student at Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, Canada: In terms of mobilizing more private capital and development, there has been discussion on MDBs' role in mitigating risk. Private sector are not allowed to invest in BB/BBB ZIP code investments from a regulatory perspective. Are there concrete proposals advancements in these discussions? GUTNER: Yes. Do I know what they all are? No. It's kind of a live discussion. And I know, in the new World Bank—the latest version of the evolution roadmap, there's talk about creating, like, a lab—an innovation lab, or a private sector lab, to try to do more. Some of the banks have hubs in some areas where they—areas in the developing world where they might have better access to private sector actors. And they're trying to engage with private sector actors in conferences and find ways of discussing project ideas. So that's not as concrete as you like, perhaps, but there are efforts to think about this. And there was a seminar at the spring meetings with private sector actors who are also saying that they felt they could do more to engage colleagues and find ways to bring the private sector and public sector together. So there are initiatives, seminars, hubs, labs. You know, all of this stuff is kind of lively and happening right now. And I do think it will be interesting to see what, if anything, catches on. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this discussion has been going on even before 2015, but the turning billions into trillions discussion. And it just hasn't worked out that well, because of these issues like risk, right? Private sector actors may not want to involve in countries where the risk is too great and where countries don't have capacity, where they have weaker capacity. So there are many challenges in this area. And just a variety of activities and ideas being put forward to try to respond. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next, a raised hand for Walton Brown. You can accept the unmute. There you go, Walton. Q: So I too—I didn't intend to hit anything. I'm so sorry. FASKIANOS: OK. That's OK. GUTNER: You can still ask a question. (Laughter.) FASKIANOS: That's OK! You can still ask a—exactly, Tammi. We can—we can still—we love hearing from you all. So, all right. Well, we will continue on— Q: And my phone is troubled. FASKIANOS: Phone is troubled. (Laughs.) No problem. That's just fine. OK, so I'm going to go next to—let's see, we've got several who don't have affiliations, but let me go to Holley Hansen: A lot of previous questions have focused on the World Bank or IMF operations. But going back to your original remarks, there also been discussion on how internal rules and procedures, such as voting, leave stakeholders out of the decision-making process. What major suggested reforms to internal decision-making do you think are viable? And what are the pros and cons of changing those rules? GUTNER: Well, the voting is part of internal decision-making. So the voting is part of that. And the real issue has been, how can—well, one of the real issues is shouldn't China have a greater stake? Shouldn't China have a higher stake? Because China is now the number-three largest stakeholder in the World Bank and the IMF, after the U.S., number one, and Japan, number two. But its stake, at around 6 percent, is really less than it should be if you follow the kind of formula they use to calculate a state's economic strength. It's been calculated that really it should be more like 12 percent, right? So part of the discussion is how to give developing countries, and especially China, more weight in governance through the—through the voting share. And that's an ongoing discussion. Right now, in today's kind of more tense political—global political environment, it's hard to imagine the U.S. supporting something like that at this juncture of time, although there have been reports that the managing director of the IMF is open to it. So I think this is going to be one of the issues that is discussed in Marrakesh next week, what to do with these voting shares? But they do adjust them every so often. So China did move up from having a lower ranking to now being number three in the IMF and World Bank. So it does happen over time. Internal decision-making is a whole complicated other kind of issue. And these development banks, you know, they all face internal decision-making challenges. They all face kind of common tensions. So one of them is how you balance authority between the country—people who work in the country and people who work on sectoral issues. So how do you—who should—who should have more decision-making authority, the country level or the sector level? There are decision-making issues and tensions between the public sector lending arms of these development banks and the private sector lending arms, because they have different incentives and different goals. So there have been challenges inside these development banks with kind of internal silos and where power and authority should be held. And it's hard to come up with what the right answer is. You know, there are pros and cons to giving more power to the country or more power to the sector. And in fact, these banks restructure from time to time. And if you look at kind of the history of the restructuring of some of the major development banks, they sort of move back and forth between where they think authority should be located. So these issue—it's a whole other can of worms than voting power on the board of directors. But it's important, because it can affect their performance. It can affect their performance and their ability to function effectively. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the last question. We have several quick questions from Fordham again. Let's see. There you go. Q: OK, thank you. So in the worst case scenario that the U.S. and China engage in conflict in Taiwan, how would the World Bank respond to the economic shocks of this in geographically vulnerable neighboring countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, and the Philippines? GUTNER: That's a tough question. Thank you for ending this with a really tough question. We're not supposed to say I don't know. (Laughs.) We're supposed to have—that's a tough one, because, again, China is number three at the World Bank. So if China—couldn't—most of the time voting doesn't happen. Most of the time, it's consensus. So it's hard to predict. I mean, you'd have to unpack a lot of different things there. You'd have to unpack what kind of—what would the World Bank normally do? Would it normally—would it affect development lending to neighboring countries? I mean, it's interesting to look at the case of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and how—what the response to that has been, because Russia's a member of all these institutions too. But the development banks mostly froze lending to Russia. Also, the AIIB did, because it had to comply—to comply with these sanctions. So Russia lending has been frozen. And these institutions are all giving money to Ukraine to help Ukraine rebuild. So there is kind of a situation that can be—that can be used to compare, to kind of get ideas about what might happen, right? And even at the AIIB, Russia is number three largest shareholder in the AIIB. It's China, India, and Russia. And the AIIB immediately froze lending to Russia. So we could—we could kind of play out different scenarios, but there's a lot of unknowns in that case. And I do think looking at the response of MDBs to Russia's invasion of Ukraine could provide some useful lessons. FASKIANOS: Tammi, we are at the end of our time. And I apologize that we couldn't get to all the questions. I wonder if you could just take a minute. You were awarded a CFR Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars, which allowed you to work—be placed in a government office. So if you could just take a minute to talk about that experience and encourage other professors to apply. The deadline's coming up. It's the end of October. So it just would be great for you to just give us your— GUTNER: Absolutely, yes. All the professors in the audience, please apply for this, because it's a special, invaluable experience. When you're—when you're studying something, and you have the opportunity to be an insider for a year, I can't even tell you how much you learn. I learned being—and it's a two-way street. They benefit from the expertise of the scholars who are coming in because we bring a different perspective. We bring different analytical and methodological tools. And I just can't tell you how much I learned that I could never find out as an outsider, including the IMF-World Bank orchestra, or the—(laughs)—yeah, actually, maybe some outsiders know that. But really, to open up the black box of an organization and see firsthand about how things work internally, what the culture's like, how things get done, what happens in the hallways. I mean, all that stuff, all of those kinds of details really enhanced my scholarship and shaped my research direction, working on these issues of collaboration, for example. So if any of you are considering applying, please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about the fellowship. I'd be happy to discuss it with you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Thank you for that, and for your amazing insights into these issues. And to all of you for your great questions. You can follow Dr. Gutner on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @TGutner. And for the students on this call, CFR has paid internships. So to learn more about the internships you can go to—and also the fellowships—you can go to CFR.org/careers. Follow us at @CFR_Academic, and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. And the next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, October 11, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT). Landry Signé, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will talk about Africa on the global stage. So, again, thank you to Tamar Gutner. And to all of you, have a great rest of your day. GUTNER: Thanks for having me. And thanks to everyone for attending. (END)

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: There is little (good) evidence that aid systematically harms political institutions, published by ryancbriggs on September 13, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Sometimes in discussions of foreign aid or charity I see people raise the point that aid might do good directly, such as by providing a health service, but that it might cause harm indirectly, for example by allowing an incompetent or corrupt state to continue existing without being forced to become better by harsh economic realities. These arguments come up in conversation, and also in books by the likes of Angus Deaton or Larry Temkin. Recently, Martha Nussbaum brought up these concerns. They're worth taking seriously. Thankfully, political scientists and economists have in fact looked at them (somewhat) seriously. In this post I'm going to tell you a tiny bit about me, explain the institutional criticism of aid in a bit more detail, and then explain the results of two papers testing this relationship. I'll also explain a tiny bit about the limitations of this kind of work. The upshot of all this is that we have very little strong evidence that aid systematically harms political institutions. My best personal guess is that while aid can sometimes have medium-sized positive or negative effects on politics in recipient countries in specific cases, on average right now and in the recent past it has very small effects in either direction. All About Me I'm a political scientist by training and most of my teaching is in a development studies department. When I was considering grad school, I was really interested in political accountability and the ways that "easy money" like oil can distort political relationships. My reading of recent history suggested to me that getting oil before having representative institutions meant locking in autocratic rule. I thought about studying oil states but then somewhat unrelatedly I tried living in Cairo for about half a year and found it quite challenging culturally - so I figured studying oil states was probably not going to work for me. My next idea was thinking about aid. In a lot of ways it seemed similar to oil: it was "easy money" for governments that let them provide goods or services to their citizens without taxing them. In many very poor countries it was also a large flow in terms of government expenditure or GDP. I wrote my big undergrad paper on this. While doing so I read the work of Deborah Brautigam on this topic and then I went to do my PhD with her. Aid and institutions in theory The "aid harms institutions" story isn't dumb. It makes internal sense, and the early (cross-sectional) evidence that we had on it sometimes suggested harm. There are so many ways that aid could harm institutions or governance in recipient countries. It could do so by acting like oil. This primarily means allowing governments to exist absent taxation. If citizens aren't taxed, so the theory goes, then maybe they won't demand representation or results from government in the same way. And if governments don't have to collect tax, then maybe they won't do state building things like building up good ways of gathering information on everybody. If we look at European states, you can easily tell a story where states felt the acute need for more money (often for fighting wars) and this set off a chain of events that built strong states and created demands for state accountability to at least some segment of the population. Aid could also harm institutions in more mundane ways. For example, donors might want to hire local staff and might pay well by local standards. This seems like a clear positive, but if enough donors do this they might poach all of the best people from government bureaucracies. Donors might also want lots of reporting to make sure money is well spent. Again this seems g...

Does China act as a “neo-colonial” force on the continent, grabbing land and subordinating the needs of Africans?  We'll discuss this, how the Ukraine conflict affects food security, Prof. Deborah Brautigam's amazing work on this issue, & much more. The Crane: An Africa-China Podcast is a bi-monthly podcast giving you a fresh look at the news, events, and debates around China-Africa relations from the perspective of two young(ish) Africans.

China's presence in Africa is widely speculated upon (and wildly misunderstood). Joining us today to speak to the truth of the matter is Sinologist-Africanist Professor of International Development at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Deborah Brautigam. Deborah is also the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) and author of Will Africa Feed China? and, more famously, The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. In this episode, she shares her nuanced perspective on the Chinese development model and aid program in Africa and how the rise of NGOs has shifted the nature of aid, in general. We discuss the role of aid as a geopolitical instrument and the differences in the ways China and the West approach the funding of infrastructure in Africa. We learn about Chinese loans versus commoditized loans, the lessons China has learned through its various endeavors, and the lessons Deborah suspects it is yet to learn. Tune in to hear more about the balance of ensuring sustainability and respecting sovereignty, what's causing the decline in Chinese infrastructure lending, and where China's focus has turned since the pandemic. Key Points From This Episode: •   Deborah Brautigam's interest in the Chinese development model and aid program in Africa. •   The argument of her first book, Will Africa Feed China? •   The problems Western aid projects have faced. •   How the rise of NGOs has shifted the nature of aid. •   The accountability structure of China in Africa. •   Aid as a geopolitical instrument. •   The two primary sources of finance for infrastructure in Africa: China and the bond markets. •   The Japanese Goa formula and its impact on Chinese aid practices today. •   How Chinese commodity-backed aid differs from that of Western entities. •   Zambia's privatization of their copper mines. •   Why commoditized loans have a bad reputation. •   The advantage Chinese loans have over commoditized loans. •   Competitive bidding and external supervision of Chinese infrastructure in Angola. •   China's reasons for supporting the developing world in the 60s and 70s: to support socialism and wrest diplomatic recognition away from Taipei and towards Beijing. •   The lessons China took from undertaking the Tanzam railway project in the 70s. •   Tazara Syndrome: the pride of funding projects nobody else wants to fund. •   The art of project appraisal and how to minimize risk in demand projections. •   China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). •   The balance between ensuring the sustainability of aid projects and respecting sovereignty. •   How political interests undermine the ability of state-owned enterprises to be sustainable. •   The specialization and division of labor between China and the West. •   The Western profit model of new urban agglomerations. •   The misguided New Yorker report on debt-trap diplomacy in Sri Lanka. •   Reasons for the recent decline in Chinese infrastructure spending. •   China's plans to focus on local infrastructure. •   Various views on China's motives amongst policymakers. •   Deborah's book recommendations pertaining to Chinese issues.   Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://deborahbrautigam.com/ (Deborah Brautigam) https://twitter.com/d_brautigam (Deborah Brautigam on Twitter) https://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Gift-Story-China-Africa/dp/0199606293 (The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa) https://www.amazon.com/Will-Africa-Feed-China/dp/B017DNILOS (Will Africa Feed China?)...

The idea that China engages in so-called "Debt Trap Diplomacy" is almost apocryphal. There is a persistent media narrative that China makes big infrastructure investments oversees as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, and when countries cant replay those loans China seizes infrastructure.  My guest today, Deborah Brautigam, is the director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  She has done extensive research on Chinese-financed infrastructure investment projects in Asia and Africa and has definitively shown that the narrative of Chinese Debt Trap diplomacy is not supported by facts. We kick off discussion the origin of this myth, which stems from media commentary around Chinese investment in a port in Sri Lanka. We then discuss other examples of the perpetuation of this myth and have a broad conversation about how China (and other lenders) actually seek repayment of loans.   

Zambia owes at least 18 Chinese creditors $6.6 billion, nearly twice as much as previously stated, according to a new report published by the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University. And that figure may be even higher as it doesn't account for penalties accrued by various Zambian borrowers who've fallen behind in their payments.While these latest findings confirm Zambia indeed has a very serious Chinese debt problem, the CARI report, however, details why the situation there is actually very different from that of other African countries that are also struggling to repay Chinese loans.The report's two authors, CARI Director Deborah Brautigam and Senior Research Assistant Yinxuan Wang join Eric & Cobus from Washington to discuss their findings and explain why Zambia is an outlier when it comes to Chinese debt in Africa.SHOW NOTES:China-Africa Research Initiative: How Zambia and China Co-Created a Debt "Tragedy of the Commons" by Deborah BrautigamChina-Africa Research Initiative: Zambia's Chinese Debt in the Pandemic Era by Deborah Brautigam and Yinxuan WangJOIN THE DISCUSSION:CAP on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectTwitter: @eolander | @stadenesque JOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff including our Week in Review report, invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaprojectYour support of this podcast helps to keep the show on the air. Thank you!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a veteran China-watcher whose career has run the gamut from investment banking to academia to the leading think tanks. Bill recently weighed in on the U.S. Department of Commerce's decision to place Esquel, a leading textile manufacturer headquartered in Hong Kong, on its entity list of companies alleged to be using forced labor from Xinjiang, lamenting that “it's quite possible that the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on the world's most socially responsible company and one that has been particularly beneficial to the Uyghurs.” Bill also discusses recent essays on other problems in American China policy.7:17: First impressions of Esquel, its technology, and its working conditions for Uyghurs21:47: Targeted sanctions vs. blanket sanctions35:06: Lack of China expertise in the highest ranks of the Biden administration's foreign policy team44:43: Why the United States should return to an economic strategyA transcript of this episode is available on SupChina.com.Recommendations:Bill: Newsletters and podcasts from SupChina; articles from The Wire China; and the article “The Chinese Debt Trap is a Myth” published in The Atlantic, by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire.Kaiser: The novel The Lions of al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Guest lecturers, Deborah Brautigam; Folashade Soule-Kohndou and Shirley Ze Yu talk to us about "China in Africa". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series. 

In this episode, Erik is joined by Terrence Neal and Dr. Elizabeth Losos to discuss their recent report that uses Ghana's $2bn bauxite-for-infrastructure deal with Sinohydro as a case study to look into the environmental implications of BRI resource-financed infrastructure agreements. Read the full report here: "The Environmental Implications of China-Africa Resource-Finance Infrastructure Agreements: Lessons Learned from Ghana's Sinohydro Agreement" About the authors: Terrence Neal is a natural resource governance researcher and current U.S. District court judicial law clerk. Terrence received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2019, and his Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy from Duke University in 2015. His research focuses on international human rights law, international economic law, and natural resources governance. Dr. Elizabeth Losos is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Guest recommendations:Elizabeth:1) China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States, Council on Foreign Relations, March 2021.Terrence:1) Go outside and ride a bike!Erik:1) Twenty Years of Data on China’s Africa Lending, Kevin Acker and Deborah Brautigam, March 2021.2) How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments, Anna Gelpern et al., March 2021.

It wasn't that long ago when China lent tens of billions of dollars to developing countries in Africa and the Americas to build vast amounts of badly-needed infrastructure. Now, it appears, those days are over. Concerns over debt sustainability, corruption, and poor planning have all led to a dramatic fall-off in Chinese lending in those regions.Deborah Brautigam, director of the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, and Kevin Gallager, head of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University join Eric & Cobus this week to talk about what the latest data on Chinese lending reveals and how Chinese development finance is rapidly evolving.SHOW NOTES:CARI Report: Twenty Years of Data on China's Africa Lending: https://bit.ly/3rzgksuChinese Interactive Loan Database at Boston University: https://chinaafricaloandata.org/JOIN THE DISCUSSION:Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectTwitter: @eolander | @stadenesque | @d_brautigam | @KevinPGallagherSUBSCRIBE TO THE CAP'S DAILY EMAIL NEWSLETTERYour subscription supports independent journalism. Subscribers get the following:1. A daily email newsletter of the top China-Africa news.2. Access to the China-Africa Experts Network3. Unlimited access to the CAP's exclusive analysis content on chinaafricaproject.comSubscriptions start at just $7 a month. Use the promo code "Podcast" and get a 20% lifetime discount on your annual subscription: www.chinaafricaproject.com/subscribe

Speaker: Deborah Brautigam, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, Director of the SAIS China Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). This lecture is part of the Critical Issues Confronting China Lecture Series at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University.

How does Chinese capital alter center-periphery relations in Kenya? Can peripheral groups have meaningful agency with Chinese state entities? Who determines, and what is considered "local" in local content agreements built into Chinese-financed infrastructure projects? On this Episode, Erik sits down Elisa Gambino to speak about her forthcoming paper entitled: "Chinese participation in Kenyan Transport Infrastructure: Reshaping Power-Geometries" that looks to answer these questions and more by using Kenya's Lamu Port as a case study. Elisa Gambino is a doctoral researcher on the African Governance and Space project at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies. You can read her prior writing on labor relations at the Lamu port here https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/02/26/job-insecurity-labour-contestation-and-everyday-resistance-at-the-chinese-built-lamu-port-site-in-kenya/Recommendations: Elisa: 1) Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness by Miriam Driessen2) Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands by Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson Erik: 1) Putting a Dollar Amount on China's Loans in the Developing World by Huang Yufang and Deborah Brautigam 2) For the American audience: Moving to a mid-tier American city. They are more dynamic than coastal cities give them credit for and one can actually afford to live in them! Added bonus if you move to a swing state!

In April 2020, reports about the poor treatment of African residents in Guangzhou were published around the world, including in the United States. COVID-19 had exacerbated the sometimes tense relationship between Africans and Chinese in China. China has invested in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors across Africa in recent decades, as well as in infrastructure development through loans, export credits, and official development assistance. What is the nature of the financing, and of the relationships between China and African nations? What does Chinese policy toward Africa mean for the United States, its bilateral relationship with China, and its relationships with the countries of Africa? On June 24, 2020, the National Committee held a virtual program with Professor Deborah Bräutigam, one of the world’s foremost experts on China and Africa and a National Committee board member, and Ambassador Jendayi Frazer, former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, to discuss China, Africa, and U.S. policy. About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/china-africa-american-policy

China has been one of the biggest financiers of infrastructure projects in Africa, but many African economies have been hit hard by the Covid 19 pandemic. So will China prove to be a generous and understanding creditor? Can it even afford to be? In the edition of the programme we hear from Zhengli Huang, a freelance researcher in Nairobi, on what’s likely to happen to Chinese-financed projects in Africa. Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, looks at what sort of debt relief China can realistically offer; and Ben Cavender, managing director of the China Market Research Group in Shanghai, talks about whether China could cope with the economic hit of many countries suddenly defaulting on their debt repayments. Presented by Manuela Saragosa. Produced by Joshua Thorpe. (Picture: Woman serving Chinese tea in a traditional tea ceremony; Credit: Creative-Family/Getty Images)

Johns Hopkins University professor and director of the China-Africa Research Initiative in Washington, D.C., Deborah Brautigam, joins Eric & Cobus this week to discuss accusations that China engages in so-called "debt trap diplomacy."  The "debt trap" narrative, also commonly referred to as "predatory lending," states that China uses excessive lending to developing countries knowing full well these countries will not have the means to repay these loans. In turn, these countries, many of them very poor, will then be forced to default on the loans and handover key strategic assets to China or be forced to otherwise compromise their sovereignty to satisfy Beijing. Brautigam looked at more than 3,000 Chinese infrastructure projects around the world in an article recently published in The American Interest magazine and found no evidence to support this oft-cited charge. China's critics in the U.S. and Europe are misguided when they focus on Beijing's massive lending as some kind of political conspiracy, explained Brautigam. Instead, she contends, China exporting corruption and crony capitalism are much more worrisome. JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Do you agree with professor Brautigam's contention that Chinese lending is more motivated by commercial considerations than political objectives and that concerns about supposed "debt traps" are overblown? Or do you think she is misreading the situation and that Chinese lending in Africa and elsewhere really is the proverbial "trojan horse" that U.S. leaders have been warning about? Let us know what you think. Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject Twitter: @eolander | @stadenesque | @d_brautigam Email: eric@chinaafricaproject.com | cobus@chinaafricaproject.com   Sign up here if you would like to join our weekly email newsletter mailing list for a carefully curated selection of the week's top China-Africa news.

Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, joins Senior Fellow David Dollar to discuss China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its implications for Africa. Brautigam and Dollar address the scale of Chinese financing in Africa and around the world, debt-trap diplomacy, labor issues, and much more.  Subscribe to Brookings podcasts here or on Apple Podcasts, send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter. Dollar and Sense is a part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

In this episode I talk to entrepreneur, writer and Co-founder of Africans on China a platform to elevate dialogue by Africans on China, Bridget Boakye and Benedicte King China-Africa scholar and travel blogger. Check out Benedicte's latest article on race in sino-African relations published in the Republic journal. Benedicte recommends: "Will Africa Feed China?" by Deborah Brautigam annetteabena.com IG: @annetteabena Twitter: @annetteabena info@annetteabena.com

When Aid Data came out with its 2013 data set on Chinese finance in Africa, it was quick to be picked up by media houses:'China commits billions in aid to Africa', said one headline in the UK's Guardian newspaper.It was also quick to be criticised by China Africa scholars such as Deborah Brautigam, who pointed out methodological issues with the data set.But Aid-Data has absorbed the criticism, refined its approach, and continues to try to map out financial flows from China to Africa.We spoke to Brad Parks, the executive director of Aid Data, a research center based at William and Mary college in the US.You can find them on twitter @aiddataDon't forget for the latest news and analysis, try out our daily newsletter.Head to www.theafricareport.com and enter your email address to receive it every weekday afternoon.

The Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held in Johannesburg in December of last year. which resulted in China pledging $60 billion in mostly loans and export credits to the countries of Africa. On July 29, delegations from 51 African countries met in Beijing for the Coordinators' Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (or FOCAC). Having a follow-up meeting to discuss the particulars of FOCAC implementation is a step common to all FOCAC meetings. In order to talk about this step we have invited back on the pod Dr. Tang Xiaoyang, Deputy Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy and an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University. He is the author of the book China-Africa Economic Diplomacy (2014). Prior to Tsinghua, Dr. Tang work for the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC. He also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development. He also has coauthored a number of publications with Prof. Deborah Brautigam of the SAIS China-Africa Research Initiative, most recently “‘Going Global in Groups’: Structural Transformation and China’s Special Economic Zones Overseas,” World Development.

The Western and African media have long fueled the myth that Chinese investors are buying up vast tracts of land across Africa as part of some neo-colonial plan to export food back to China. Sure, on one level, the theory appears plausible: China has around 20% of the world's population with less than 7% of the planet's arable land, so it seems obvious that Beijing might look abroad in search of farmland to feed its people. There's only one small problem. That premise, no matter how convincing it may sound, is just flat-out wrong. Johns Hopkins University professor Deborah Brautigam detailed all of the reasons why this myth remains so durable in her 2015 book "Will Africa Feed China?" A lot of it, according to Brautigam,has to do with a mix of bad journalism, Western narratives of African victimization and the Chinese themselves who oversell their ambitions in Africans. Now, though, there's a twist to the story. Not only are the Chinese not on a land-buying spree in Africa, it appears they are actually doing more to support African agricultural development than any other country in the world. Professor Ian Scoones from the Insitute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex recently completed a four-country research project into Chinese agricultural engagement in Africa and discovered that the combination of Chinese immigrant farmers in Africa along with the deployment of Chinese agricultural technology and PRC government training programs that have brought some 10,000 African officials to China have all had a remarkably positive impact on Africa's struggling agricultural sector. Professor Scoones joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why Chinese engagement in African agriculture is not what it seems. Join the discussion. Are you encouraged or concerned about China's interest in African agriculture? Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject Twitter: @eolander | @stadenesque    

Given its experience of colonialism, Africans have long been suspicious of Chinese intentions on the continent. Recent allegations of unprecedented Chinese state-sponsored acquisitions of African farmland have alarmed many who now fear that Africa, with its large tracts of untouched arable land, will enter a new colonial era. In her book, Will Africa Feed China?, leading expert and National Committee director Deborah Bräutigam analyzes the nature of Chinese agricultural investment in Africa. After conducting research in several African countries, Dr. Bräutigam discovered that despite claims of a calculated Chinese plan to control rural Africa for its own purposes, Chinese agricultural investment in Africa has been remarkably limited; in fact, China exports more agricultural goods to Africa than it imports.  The concern is not limited to agriculture; Chinese investment throughout Africa has generally been viewed through a neocolonial lens. The widespread suspicion calls into question the foundation of Sino-African relations. Dr. Bräutigam discussed her book, and Chinese policy in Africa at the first installment of our 50th Anniversary special series, China and the World, on February 25, 2016 in New York City. This interview was conducted by National Committee President Stephen Orlins.  Dr. Deborah Bräutigam is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy, director of the International Development Program, and director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her most recent books include The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Will Africa Feed China? (OUP, 2015). Before joining SAIS in 2012, she taught at Columbia University and American University. The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

If you are listening to this podcast, there is a good chance that you have heard of Prof. Deborah Brautigam and her research - "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" published in 2010 by the Oxford University Press is, for a lot of young scholars, the gateway by which they became interested in Africa-China affairs. However, not nearly as many people are aware of Prof. Brautigam's research center, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS CARI) and we want to remedy that, so hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah (Yiting Wang is sadly absent) invited Janet Eom on the pod. Ms. Eom is the Research Manager at SAIS CARI, and previously she researched the impact on society, environment, and labor relations of Chinese activity in Africa at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. She discusses the SAIS CARI post-doctoral research fellow position and other opportunities for researchers as well as the vision for the Initiative on this episode.

Prof. Deborah Brautigam is one of the foremost China-Africa scholars in the world, perhaps most famous for her 2010 book The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, published by Oxford University Press. She is the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' Bernard L. Schwartz Professor in International Political Economy, as well as Professor of International Development and Comparative Politics, and Director of the International Development Program and the China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS CARI). She recently published a wonderful myth-busting book on China-Africa agriculture, titled "Will Africa Feed China?" and published again by Oxford University Press, which is available now for purchase. Hosts Winslow Robertson, Lina Benabdallah, and Yiting Wang, discuss Brautigam's book, her research, and how agriculture fit into the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

We are joined by Deborah Brautigam, author of "Will Africa feed China" and "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" to talk about Chinese-African relations and misconceptions of China's role on the African continent. Subscribe: RSS | iTunes | Soundcloud | Stitcher Follow us and our guests: Desné Masie (co-host): Twitter Peter Dörrie (co-host/producer): Twitter | Facebook | Homepage Deborah Brautigam (guest): Twitter | Blog African Arguments: Twitter | Facebook | Homepage Notes Recommendations Desne's review of "The Book of Memory" by Petinah Gappah The Book of Memory on Amazon The Royal African Society's "Whats_on Africa" Graeme Wood: What ISIS really wants Kongo: Power and Majesty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Chris Blattman's blog post on the exhebition China in Africa 2005 BBC article on dynamite factory explosion in Zambia Eckart Woertz: "Oil for Food: The Global Food Crisis and the Middle East" Agenda Africities 2015 Summit 7th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Deborah's talk at Wits University: "Feeding Frenzy – Fictions & Facts about China, Africa & the Media" on November 17 Thanks for listening! We are grateful to African Arguments and the Royal African Society for supporting the podcast. If you would like to support us, have a suggestion for a topic we should cover or a guest we should invite, please get in touch! There are links to the social media profiles of our hosts above, or drop us a line at africanargumentspodcast@gmail.com. The music on this podcast was kindly provided by DJ Maramza.

Among the most durable myths surrounding the China-Africa relationship is the fear that the Chinese government and private enterprises are buying vast tracts of African farm land and have plans to transplant millions of Chinese peasants to live and work on the continent. Over the years, these rumors have been fueled by prominent news publications in the West, politicians and, on occasion, by the Chinese themselves. The fears of Chinese agribusiness effectively colonizing portions of Africa is often well-received by many Africans who are understandably skeptical about the intentions of large foreign powers in light of their historical experience. In her new book "Will Africa Feed China?", Johns Hopkins University professor Deborah Brautigam seeks to definitively debunk this narrative. Together with other Sino-African scholars, professor Brautigam traveled across Africa in search of any evidence to support the allegation that the Chinese enterprises are making massive investments in African agriculture. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever to suggest the Chinese are making any such inroads in the African land market, Dr. Brautigam discovered the entire story is actually upside down. Not only are African governments reaching out to the Chinese to invest more in their agricultural sectors, it's Chinese agriculture that's actually feeding Africa! Well, not exactly. However, given that Africa produces only 13% of the food that it consumes, it must rely on imports for the rest, including rice and other processed foods from China among many other countries. Professor Brautigam structures her book around four tenants that define the Chinese land grab myth in Africa: 1) The Chinese have acquired large areas of farmland in Africa. 2) The Chinese government is leading the effort through state owned companies and the country's powerful sovereign wealth funds. 3) The Chinese are growing massive amounts of grain in Africa to export back to China. 4) The Chinese have sent (or plan to send) large numbers of Chinese farmers to settle in Africa. Professor Brautigam joins Eric & Cobus this week to discuss her new book and why the mythology of Chinese land imperialism in Africa is so persuasive.

If you are listening to this podcast, you are no doubt well-acquainted with the research of Prof. Deborah Brautigam, having read "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" or her wonderful blog "China in Africa: The Real Story." However, did you know that Prof. Brautigam has started a new, exciting Sino-Africa research initiative? On today's episode, host Winslow Robertson asks Prof. Brautigam about the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), which recently held its inaugural public conference: "China’s Agricultural Investment in Africa: ‘Land Grabs’ or ‘Friendship Farms’?" If you want to know what one of the top scholars in the Sino-Africa field is up to, or where the field is headed, you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode!

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer.Deborah Brautigam is the author of Chinese Aid and African Development, Aid Dependence and Governance, and coeditor of Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries. She is a professor in the International Development Program at American University's School of International Service in Washington, DC.Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer.Deborah Brautigam is the author of Chinese Aid and African Development, Aid Dependence and Governance, and coeditor of Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries. She is a professor in the International Development Program at American University's School of International Service in Washington, DC.Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

A talk by Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz. The current global financial crisis carries a "made in America" label. In "Freefall", Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN Commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz then outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government; addressing the inequalities of the global financial system; and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. "Freefall" combines an account of the current crisis with a discussion of the broader economic issues at stake. From the World Beyond the Headlines series.

A talk by Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz. The current global financial crisis carries a "made in America" label. In "Freefall", Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN Commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz then outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government; addressing the inequalities of the global financial system; and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. "Freefall" combines an account of the current crisis with a discussion of the broader economic issues at stake. From the World Beyond the Headlines series.

A talk by American University professor Deborah Brautigam. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer. Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by American University professor Deborah Brautigam. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer. Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by American University professor Deborah Brautigam. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer. Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.