For over 15 years, China has been a vital source of development finance for low- and middle-income countries around the world, committing nearly a half-trillion dollars in public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) finance since 2008. With lending far below peak levels seen in 2015-2017, what is the current status of China’s overseas development finance? And […]
Robust environmental and social risk management (ESRM) frameworks are posited as tools that can, if effectively implemented, contribute to more sustainable and inclusive development. Yet beyond the ESRM challenges that have emerged from previous booms, the ongoing critical mineral boom is associated with distinct geographies, rapid speed of expansion and, in some cases, newly-commercialized extraction […]
Por Julie Radomski, Zara Albright y Rebecca Ray Mientras los líderes de América Latina y el Caribe (ALC) se preparan para el próximo Foro China-CELAC (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños) en Pekín, esta reunión debe ser entendida menos como un lugar para anunciar nuevos compromisos importantes y más como una continuación de los diálogos […]
By Julie Radomski, Zara Albright and Rebecca Ray As Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) leaders prepare for the upcoming China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum in Beijing, the meeting should be viewed less as a venue for announcing major new commitments and more as a continuation of existing diplomatic and economic dialogues. […]
A new class of low-carbon goods and services forms the essential inputs for the global transition to lower-carbon and climate-resilient economic growth paths. By constructing a new dataset of such low-carbon technology (LCT) trade, a new journal article published in Science by Praveena Bandara, Rebecca Ray, Jiaqi Lu and Kevin P. Gallagher finds that the […]
In September 2021, Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged that China would stop financing new overseas coal-fired power plants and instead pledged to ramp up support for renewable energy projects. This announcement marked an important shift in China’s global energy policy, with potential to fill the glaring gaps in the financing necessary for the energy […]
By Julian Watrous and Stephen Paduano The last two decades have seen a fundamental shift in global sovereign lending patterns. By the late 2010s, China emerged as the world’s largest official bilateral creditor. China’s record of infrastructure financing, primarily through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is now well-known. More recent, and less theorized, is […]
Since its founding, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has in theory sought to act as the international “lender of last resort,” providing financing to countries facing balance-of-payments and macrofinancial pressures. However, in the 21st century, the landscape of international rescue lending has shifted. China has become the world’s largest bilateral lender, providing assistance comparable to […]
By Cornel Ban and Xuan Li In most Western economies, venture capital (VC) is largely a private enterprise, driven by the pursuit of profit. The state typically plays a secondary role, stepping in only when private capital is hesitant. Government VC firms fill this gap, providing risk capital to innovative startups and fueling Mazzucato-style “missions.” […]
Driven by geopolitics and the threat of climate change, industrial policy has reclaimed center stage in the comparative political economy of national economies, irrespective of their level of per capita income. However, this turn has been criticized for primarily enticing private capital into serving public agendas in ways that reduce the state to a “derisking” […]