In the last decade, China has emerged as a major development partner for many countries, increasingly visible as traditional Western donors reduce or recalibrate their engagement in various regions and sectors. This shift raises important questions for Swedish and European development policy: How might China fill gaps left by traditional providers? How can development effectiveness be maintained and recipientcountry priorities respected in a multipolar aid environment? Where can Swedish aid have the greatest impact? Understanding China’s global ambitions and its evolving role as a multilateral actor is essential for grasping how it shapes international development.
This anthology situates China within this evolving terrain. It analyzes China’s approaches across health, climate and environmental governance, gender equality, trade, infrastructure, finance, agriculture, and media, with concrete examples and geographical case studies (Africa, Southeast Asia, Ukraine, and Iran). It assesses China’s global development footprint, opportunities, and risks. Key questions include aid modalities (grants vs. loans, tied vs. untied aid), governance and transparency, debt sustainability, local ownership, human rights, governance standards, and the social and environmental impacts of projects. It highlights Sweden’s and the European Union’s comparative advantages and how to leverage them in dialogue with China and partner countries. It also examines how development finance interacts with private investment, public–private partnerships, and domestic policy reforms, core elements of contemporary development cooperation.
Main findings:
- Multilateral dialogue and collaboration are evolving. There is room for EU–China conversations on development finance, co-financing risks and safeguards, and the exploration of blended finance and guarantees, provided there are strong transparency, governance, and accountability measures.
- China’s rise as an international development actor is tied to its broader strategic, economic, and political objectives, including infrastructureled growth, access to resources, and the diffusion of its standards and governance models.
- China’s development practice encompasses a broad set of sec-tors, and regional case studies show diverse outcomes. Financing is heavily weighted toward loans tied to Chinese firms and materials, with varying implications for recipient-country debt, local value capture, and procurement practices.
- Western development paradigms have increasingly converged with Chinese models. Major donors, notably the US, have adopted more state-centric and infrastructureoriented strategies, emphasizing transactional engagement with recipient governments. Sweden’s new International Trade Strategy, which aims to better integrate trade and investment policies with development objectives, moves Sweden closer to China’s integrated approach.
- Sweden and other traditional donors need clear, evidencebased positioning to maintain cohesion and legitimacy in international development governance, leveraging China’s resources for broader development outcomes while protecting recipient-country ownership and adhering to OECD-DAC norms and interna-tional human rights standards.