China's Aid Policy Toward Economically Weakened States: A Case of State Criminality? (From State Crime in the Global Age, P 152-169, 2010, William J. Chambliss, Raymond Michalowski, and Ronald C. Kramer, eds. - See NCJ-230909)

• NCJ Number: 230918
• Author(s): Dawn L. Rothe
• Date Published: 2010
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter analyzes China's economic role in Africa as well as the practices of international financial institutions (IFIs) in this same region.

Abstract

The chapter first reviews the literature concerning international institutions and crimes of globalization in which IFIs were active agents in crimes against humanity, genocide, and/or avoidable atrocities. A discussion of the work of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) is followed by an analysis of China's role in African states in order to identify policies that contrast with those of the IFIs. The article concludes with an examination of the potential for China to act as a control mechanism over IFIs' actions. First introduced by Friedrichs and Friedrichs (2002), crimes of globalization have characteristics of state crime, political crime, white-collar crime, state-corporate crime, and financial crime, but they do not neatly fit into any of these crime categories. Crimes of globalization involve cooperative endeavors between IFIs, transnational corporations, and state or political entities that engage in harmful activities in violation of international law or international human rights conventions. Although IFIs claim that their central mission is to alleviate economic and other forms of suffering, their privileging of transnational corporate interests and the interests of powerful states, coupled with IFIs implementation of a "top-down" form of globalization, has resulted in harmful consequences. Operating its own form of economic assistance, China is currently providing economic aid to approximately 40 African states either directly or through debt forgiveness. China has been criticized for aid to nondemocratic regimes and those that practice human rights abuses, but for the first time in nearly two decades, economically impoverished African countries now have a choice between financing from IFIs that have multiple conditions, strings, and mandated adjustment policies and from China, which has fewer strings attached to economic aid. 1 table, 2 figures, and 3 notes