Who's the big boss of the global south?
' "Contrary to conventional wisdom, Beijing is not in retreat,” says Bradley Parks, one of the authors. The paper finds that there are many more entities extending credit to the developing world today: in 2021 it counted lending of $80bn a year. “[China] remains the single largest source of international development finance in the world.”
China is targeting geopolitical fence-sitters. AidData reckons that around two-thirds of Chinese financing goes to “toss-up” countries, where neither China nor America clearly holds sway. The group has identified a quid pro quo: if a government increases its share of votes at the un General Assembly (unga) that align with China’s by ten percentage points, it can expect a 276% increase, on average, in financing from Beijing. China has also used its weight to curry favour on subjects such as its repression in Xinjiang. From 2000 to 2021 “low- and middle-income countries” voted on foreign-policy decisions with China 75% of the time at the unga.'
