Can There Be An East Asian Donor Model? A Comparative Study of South Korea, China and Japan

Development assistance by Japan, China and South Korea, time for cooperation and competition has come (Kitano, 2012).

According to Stallings (2013), it seems that East Asian donors show similarities in the patterns of official development aid (ODA) compared to so-called Western donors, in terms of geographical allocation, sectoral allocation, grants and loans profile and public-private links. First, while East Asian donors tend to provide their aid mostly to Asia region, Western donors, especially the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors, show a tendency to focus on lower income countries. Second, East Asian donors emphasise economic infrastructure, whereas Western donors allocate aid at the social sector. Third, it seems that East Asian donors provide more loans than grants, which is opposite tendency to Western providers. Furthermore, East Asian donor countries consider the public-private relation as a ‘large package’ within the public-private partnership framework, whilst Western aid providers tend to show a division of labour approach between public and private sectors.