China as provider of development finance

20.03.2025 12:00 - 13:30English

China's development finance and infrastructure development in the Global South.

Since the millennium, China has emerged as a major provider of development finance and infrastructure development in the Global South. This has been reinforced with the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative launched in 2013.

It terms of volume China’s contribution is comparable to that provided by the World Bank and the traditional providers of such support.

What difference does China make? Is its provision of such finance different from that coming from other providers? And how does China view and respond to critical issues such as financial sustainability and the challenge of debt?

Lunch will be served from 11:45

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Bergen Global
Jekteviksbakken 31, Bergen

20.03.2025
12:00 - 13:30
English
Add to calendar 20.03.2025, 20.03.2025

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Xiaoyang Tang
Xiaoyang Tang
Professor, Tsinghua University

Chair and Professor, Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University in Beijing and research affiliate for the China-Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C.

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Esther Song
Associate Professor, UiB

Esther Song conducts research on politics and international relations of China, international affairs in the Asia-Pacific, and authoritarianism with regional focus on countries in East Asia.

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Aslak Orre
Aslak Orre
Senior Researcher, CMI

Political scientist whose competence areas include local government reform, corruption and anti-corruption as well as parties and opposition in Africa.

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Elling N. Tjønneland
Senior Researcher, CMI

Political scientist focusing on development and development assistance, rising powers and African development and a strong emphasis on South Africa and Southern Africa.

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Xiaoyang Tang

Professor, Tsinghua University
Xiaoyang Tang

Chair and Professor, Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University in Beijing and research affiliate for the China-Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C.

He has published extensively on China-Africa relations and on China’s development finance to the Global South. His most recent monograph is Coevolutionary Pragmatism. Approaches and Impacts of China-Africa Economic Cooperation (Cambridge University Press 2020).

Esther Song

Associate Professor, UiB

Esther Song conducts research on politics and international relations of China, international affairs in the Asia-Pacific, and authoritarianism with regional focus on countries in East Asia.

Her methodological interests include survey analysis and computational text analysis. Song’s current research focuses on the effects of elite cues on foreign policy attitudes, the intellectualization of propaganda in autocracies, and the role of elite management in succession within autocracies.

Prior to joining UiB she was a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and a pre-doctoral fellow at Fudan University. She holds MA and PhD in Political Science from Stanford University. https://esthersong.org

Aslak Orre

Senior Researcher, CMI
Aslak Orre

Political scientist whose competence areas include local government reform, corruption and anti-corruption as well as parties and opposition in Africa.

Orre is educated in political science and social anthropology. His research focus is on Angola and Mozambique for more than two decades, and he has followed political development in Venezuela closely over the last 15 years.

Elling N. Tjønneland

Senior Researcher, CMI

Political scientist focusing on development and development assistance, rising powers and African development and a strong emphasis on South Africa and Southern Africa.

Tjønneland is a political scientist with more than 30 years of experience focusing on a range of development issues and development aid and with a strong geographical focus on Africa, South Africa and Southern Africa. He has led numerous international assessment and evaluation teams commissioned by a range of Norwegian, international and African institutions.

He has field experience from many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This includes Angola, Botswana, Cambodia, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malaysia, Malawi, Mocambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Palestine, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

See personal page.

Bergen Global is a joint initiative between the University of Bergen and Chr. Michelsen Institute that addresses global challenges.