China - Global Development
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and BRICS leadership are reshaping global development, debt, and power in 2026
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China’s Journey: From Aid Recipient to Global Development Power
In 1978, China was a poor, mostly agricultural country. Deng Xiaoping opened it to trade and market reform that year. What followed reshaped the world. Real GDP grew above 9% a year for decades. China lifted an estimated 800 million people out of poverty. By 2011, its economy had become the world’s second-largest.
Today, China no longer just receives development finance. It supplies it, on a scale few countries can match. That shift sits at the center of this page: a rising power, a global lending machine, and a bloc of nations trying to rewrite the rules of the international order.
The Belt and Road Initiative: China’s Signature Project
Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, while visiting Kazakhstan. The plan was simple in concept: revive the old Silk Road, this time with ports, railways, and power stations. More than a decade later, the BRI spans over 150 countries. New contracts and investment reached a record $213.5 billion in 2025 alone.
Xi describes the BRI as building a “community of shared future for mankind.” On the ground, that means concrete outcomes. The Mombasa-Nairobi railway transformed transport in Kenya. The Hambantota Port expanded Sri Lanka’s maritime reach. A new $4.7 billion rail link now connects China to Central Asia through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
From Banker to Debt Collector: The BRI Enters a New Phase
The BRI’s story is changing. In parts of Africa, countries now repay more to China than they receive in new financing. Analysts call this a shift from bilateral banker to debt collector. Laos illustrates the risk: a hydropower lending binge left the country in deep economic distress.
China increasingly favors smaller, greener projects over giant megaprojects. Renewable energy, healthcare, and technology now feature more heavily in new deals. This shift responds to years of criticism, and to China’s own slowing growth at home.
China’s Place in Global ODA: A Donor Unlike the Others
China does not fit neatly into standard aid statistics. It never joined the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, and it does not report its overseas lending the same way traditional donors do. This makes China’s true development footprint hard to measure precisely.
Independent researchers fill that gap. AidData at William & Mary tracks Chinese official finance directly, since Beijing publishes no comparable dataset itself. Its research shows China committed over $1.34 trillion across 20,000 projects in 165 countries between 2000 and 2021.
Most of this money does not count as traditional aid. China’s reported ODA-equivalent spending remains modest next to the US or Germany. However, once commercial-style loans are included, researchers found China’s total development spending exceeded G7 countries combined for several years running.
This distinction matters enormously. Traditional ODA carries grant elements and concessional terms by definition. Chinese finance leans far more heavily toward loans, meaning recipient countries take on real repayment obligations, not aid in the conventional sense.
Analysts increasingly doubt China will replace the aid lost through 2025’s Western cuts. Research groups tracking both trends note Chinese lending has actually slowed since 2016, even as US and European aid collapsed. The gap left by USAID’s closure remains largely unfilled.
A Different Development Model: South-South Cooperation
China finances development differently than Western donors. State banks, led by the Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank, favor loans over grants. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2016, now counts over 100 member countries.
China calls this approach “South-South cooperation,” positioning itself as a developing nation sharing experience, not imposing conditions. Thousands of Chinese agricultural and medical experts work abroad each year, from crop yields in Africa to remote medical clinics worldwide.
A fresh example arrived in 2026. Starting May 1, China extended zero-tariff treatment to all 53 African countries with diplomatic ties to Beijing. That policy had previously covered only the least-developed nations among them. It also lands just as a rival US programme, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, nears expiration at the end of 2026.
BRICS and the Shift Toward a Multipolar World
China’s development story no longer stands alone. Since 2009, it has built a parallel project: BRICS, a bloc now central to talk of a multipolar world.
From an Acronym to an Alliance
A Goldman Sachs economist coined “BRIC” in 2001, grouping Brazil, Russia, India, and China as rising economies. Those four held their first summit in 2009. South Africa joined a year later, turning BRIC into BRICS.
The bloc has expanded fast since. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE joined on January 1, 2024. Indonesia followed in early 2025, becoming the group’s first Southeast Asian member. BRICS also created a new “partner country” category, opening the door to dozens more nations. Today, BRICS+ represents nearly half the world’s population and roughly 35–40% of global GDP.
De-Dollarization and the New Development Bank
BRICS increasingly bypasses the dollar. Roughly 65% of trade between member states now settles in local currencies. Russia reports that figure reached 90% of its BRICS trade in 2024. A new payment system, BRICS Pay, launched in 2026 as a decentralized alternative to SWIFT.
The bloc’s New Development Bank finances infrastructure and sustainability projects across member states, offering an alternative to the World Bank and IMF. It remains smaller than either institution, but it gives developing countries another option.
China’s Role: Central, But Contested
China holds the largest economy in BRICS, giving it outsized influence. That influence unsettles some partners. India, for instance, wants stronger global governance, but remains wary of Chinese dominance within the bloc. Border disputes between the two countries still strain cooperation.
India took over the BRICS presidency in 2026, following Brazil’s term in 2025. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reframed the acronym as “Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability.” He has pushed reform of the UN Security Council and other post-war institutions, arguing they no longer reflect today’s world.
Analysts remain split on what this all adds up to. BRICS lacks the shared institutions and security commitments that hold together a bloc like NATO. It functions more as a parallel platform than a replacement for the existing order. Even so, it is measurably shifting how the world is run.
Critical Perspectives on China’s Approach
China’s development record draws real achievements and real criticism, often for the same projects.
Debt Sustainability Concerns
Some countries have taken on debt they now struggle to repay. Zambia defaulted on loans in 2020, partly tied to Chinese lending. Djibouti’s public external debt jumped from 50% to 85% of GDP in just two years. China sometimes secures loans against collateral, most famously Sri Lanka’s 99-year lease on Hambantota Port after it could not repay its debt.
Environmental and Social Standards
Many BRI projects proceed without rigorous environmental review. Some Chinese-built coal plants have raised emissions in host countries, despite China’s pledge to stop financing new coal overseas. Local communities sometimes report thin consultation, and Chinese firms often bring in workers rather than hiring locally.
Governance and Transparency Issues
Loan terms frequently stay confidential, and China often negotiates deals bilaterally rather than through open bidding. That opacity makes it hard for citizens in borrowing countries to hold anyone accountable. Corruption allegations have surfaced around several BRI-linked projects, particularly in Africa.
Tax Practices and Financial Secrecy
Chinese companies operating abroad sometimes secure generous tax exemptions, reducing already strained government budgets. Profit shifting back to mainland China or Hong Kong limits local tax collection further. Chinese development banks, unlike many Western institutions, rarely publish detailed project financials.
Hong Kong itself ranks fourth globally on the Tax Justice Network’s 2025 Financial Secrecy Index, behind only the US, Switzerland, and Singapore. It also ranks sixth on the related Corporate Tax Haven Index. Mainland China ranks twelfth on financial secrecy, a meaningfully smaller but still notable role.
This dual structure matters for global development. Money can move between mainland China and Hong Kong with far more secrecy than most Western financial systems allow. That opacity compounds the accountability concerns already present in BRI lending itself.
Climate Action: Two Tracks at Once
China runs two climate policies simultaneously, one at home and one abroad. Domestically, it now produces nearly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than double the United States. Yet it also leads the world in clean energy investment, accounting for over 30% of the global total.
In September 2025, Xi Jinping announced China’s first-ever absolute emissions target: a 7-10% cut below peak levels by 2035. Climate analysts called this pledge weaker than hoped, since China could achieve much of it under already-planned policies.
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, released in March 2026, set a cautious 17% carbon-intensity reduction target for 2030. This was lower than the previous plan’s 18% goal, which China had itself failed to reach. Coal still generates more than half of China’s electricity.
Even so, the clean energy build-out is real and fast. China installed 93 gigawatts of solar capacity in a single month in 2025, more than most countries install in an entire year. Electric vehicles reached 63% of new car sales by May 2026.
Overseas, China pledged in 2021 to stop financing new coal plants abroad, and its overseas renewable energy financing more than doubled between 2024 and 2025. At COP30 in November 2025, China sent a large delegation, while the US sent none, positioning itself as a champion of Global South climate cooperation.
Critics note a gap between this diplomatic posture and China’s own coal expansion at home. Nearly 300 gigawatts of new coal capacity remained in the pipeline domestically in 2025, even as China promotes green BRI projects abroad.
Trade War 2.0: Tariffs, Rare Earths, and a New Global Order
US-China trade tension shapes global development well beyond the two countries themselves. A fragile truce, reached at the October 2025 Busan summit and reaffirmed at a May 2026 Beijing summit, has repeatedly cracked under new export controls and tariff threats.
China controls over 80% of global rare earth processing, giving it leverage far beyond its own trade volume. In June 2026, Beijing added US rare earth and drone companies to an export blacklist, reviving tensions the Busan truce was meant to settle.
This conflict increasingly runs through regulation rather than tariffs alone. China’s new 2026 rules on extraterritorial jurisdiction let it penalize any company, anywhere, that complies with US sanctions at China’s expense. Analysts describe this as a shift from a trade war to full economic statecraft.
For developing countries, this rivalry creates difficult choices. Businesses in third countries increasingly must choose between US and Chinese compliance regimes, with penalties on either side for choosing wrong. Smaller economies risk becoming collateral damage in a fight between two much larger powers.
China’s own trade posture toward developing nations looks different. Its 2026 zero-tariff extension to 53 African countries, described above, positions Beijing as the more open trading partner exactly as Washington raises tariffs and lets preferential programmes lapse.
How This Connects to the SDGs
China’s development role touches nearly every SDG simultaneously, often pulling in different directions at once. Its own poverty reduction supports SDG 1 domestically, while BRI infrastructure lending expands SDG 9, industry and infrastructure, across dozens of recipient countries.
Debt sustainability concerns connect directly to SDG 17, on global partnerships, testing whether Chinese finance helps or ultimately burdens the countries receiving it. Climate policy pulls both ways: SDG 13 benefits from Chinese renewable energy leadership, yet suffers from continued domestic coal expansion.
Financial secrecy in Hong Kong and mainland China weakens SDG 16, on strong institutions, and indirectly SDG 10, reducing inequality, by enabling capital flight from developing economies. Trade policy, especially the contrast between Chinese and US tariff treatment of poorer nations, shapes SDG 8, decent work, for millions of export-dependent workers worldwide.
Because China now acts as both a major SDG success story and a significant source of spillover risk for other countries, it offers a uniquely dual case study for how development and harm can originate from the same set of policies.
Looking Forward
China’s development model keeps evolving. Green Investment Principles now guide new BRI projects, and debt restructuring has helped several struggling borrowers. Competition between China and traditional donors could still benefit developing nations, if it improves terms rather than fragmenting cooperation.
Watch four threads through 2026 and beyond. First, whether BRICS under India’s presidency builds real institutions, or stays a symbolic platform. Second, whether de-dollarization inside BRICS keeps accelerating, or stalls under pressure from Washington.
Third, whether China’s newer, smaller, greener BRI projects reduce the debt and environmental criticism that shaped its first decade. Fourth, whether the fragile US-China trade truce holds through 2026, or collapses into the kind of regulatory war some analysts already see forming.
The future of global development will likely feature China and the traditional donors side by side, not as a clean replacement of one by the other. That multipolar reality creates both new risks and new openings for the countries caught in between.
Sources
- Belt and Road Initiative overview — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
- China’s Belt and Road enters a new phase, CKGSB Knowledge — english.ckgsb.edu.cn
- China zero-tariff extension to Africa, farmdoc daily — farmdocdaily.illinois.edu
- BRICS expansion and multipolarity, Clingendael Institute — clingendael.org
- India leads BRICS+ in 2026, Eurasia Review — eurasiareview.com
- BRICS 2026 implications for a multipolar world, The Business Standard — tbsnews.net
- AidData, China’s Global Development Footprint — aiddata.org
- SIPRI, “China and the Changing International Development Landscape” — sipri.org
- Tax Justice Network, Indexes & Tools (Financial Secrecy Index and Corporate Tax Haven Index) — taxjustice.net
- Council on Foreign Relations, “China’s Latest Climate Pledges Fall Short of What’s Needed at COP30” — cfr.org
- Climate Action Tracker, China country profile — climateactiontracker.org
- Carbon Brief, “Q&A: What does China’s new Paris Agreement pledge mean for climate action?” — carbonbrief.org
- South China Morning Post, “US-China rare earth clash 2.0?” — scmp.com
- China Briefing, “Trump-Xi Meeting: US and China Agree to Tariff, Rare Earth Concessions” — china-briefing.com
In China, 1980 marked a generational turning point
The year 1980 in China is well known as the beginning of the country’s one-child policy. But what may be overlooked is how that year also marked a turning point in China’s generational experiences: Roughly half (47%) of China’s current population were born under the policy (ages 0 to 34 today), and they lived through a very different China than the half who were born before.
> pewresearch.org/in-china-1980-marked-a-generational-turning-point
China
People’s Republic of China
中华人民共和国 (Chinese)
Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó (Pinyin)
Background
China’s historical civilization dates to at least the 13th century B.C., first under the Shang (to 1046 B.C.) and then the Zhou (1046-221 B.C.) dynasties. The imperial era of China began in 221 B.C. under the Qin Dynasty and lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. During this period, China alternated between periods of unity and disunity under a succession of imperial dynasties. In the 19th century, the Qing Dynasty suffered heavily from overextension by territorial conquest, insolvency, civil war, imperialism, military defeats, and foreign expropriation of ports and infrastructure. It collapsed following the Revolution of 1911, and China became a republic under SUN Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) Party. However, the republic was beset by division, warlordism, and continued foreign intervention. In the late 1920s, a civil war erupted between the ruling KMT-controlled government, led by CHIANG Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Japan occupied much of northeastern China in the early 1930s, and then launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 1937. The resulting eight years of warfare devastated the country and cost up to 20 million Chinese lives by the time of Japan’s defeat in 1945. The Nationalist-Communist civil war continued with renewed intensity after the end of World War II and culminated with a CCP victory in 1949, under the leadership of MAO Zedong.
MAO and the CCP established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring the PRC’s sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and launched agricultural, economic, political, and social policies — such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) — that cost the lives of millions of people. MAO died in 1976. Beginning in 1978, leaders DENG Xiaoping, JIANG Zemin, and HU Jintao focused on market-oriented economic development and opening up the country to foreign trade, while maintaining the rule of the CCP. Since the change, China has been among the world’s fastest growing economies, with real gross domestic product averaging over 9% growth annually through 2021, lifting an estimated 800 million people out of poverty and dramatically improving overall living standards. By 2011, the PRC’s economy was the second largest in the world. Current leader XI Jinping has continued these policies but has also maintained tight political controls. Over the past decade, China has increased its global outreach, including military deployments, participation in international organizations, and a global connectivity plan in 2013 called the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). Many nations have signed on to BRI agreements to attract PRC investment, but others have expressed concerns about such issues as the opaque nature of the projects, financing, and potentially unsustainable debt obligations. XI Jinping assumed the positions of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2012 and President in 2013. In 2018, the PRC’s National People’s Congress passed an amendment abolishing presidential term limits, which allowed XI to gain a third five-year term in 2023.