China’s evolving humanitarian diplomacy: Evidence from China’s disaster-related aid to Nepal
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/20578911211019255 |
| Author | Peng Lin |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special issue articles |
China’s evolving
humanitarian diplomacy:
Evidence from China’s
disaster-related aid to
Nepal
Peng Lin
Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, China
Abstract
Engaging in disaster relief and, more recently, post-disaster reconstruction in developing countries
with critical geoeconomic and geopolitical interests has become an increasingly regular and institu-
tionalizedcomponent of China’s evolvinghumanitarian diplomacyover the past decade. Drawnupon
novel evidence from China’s growing disaster-related humanitarian assistance to Nepal and unpre-
cedented engagement in Nepal’s long-term post-earthquake rebuildsince 2015, this article explores
the dynamicsbehind China’s transforminghumanitarian diplomacy.The findings of this articlesuggest
that: 1)geopolitical and geoeconomicinterests, representedby the Belt-and-RoadInitiative, serveas a
criticaldriver for the developmentof China’s bilateral partnership with othercountries in the disaster
sector; 2) long-term cooperation with underdeveloped countries like Nepal provides China, both
government and non-state actors (NSAs), with an effective channel toengage with the international
humanitarian community and to internalize humanitarian norms; 3) although humanitarian missions
remain contingent and instrumentalin China’s internationalrelations, they are laying the foundations
for a specialized humanitarian policy area with more relevant normative assets, more professional
actors, and more sophisticated institutions; 4) NSAs, represented by private foundations and civil
NGOs, have played active roles in the state-dominant cooperation in disaster management. This
article alsosuggests that intensifiedgeopolitical confrontations, such as militaryclashes between India
and Chinaalong their disputed bordersover the past year, would lead to a highdegree of politicization
of humanitarianmissions and partnerships counter-conducive to humanitarian goals.
Keywords
disasters, humanitarian diplomacy, Sino–Nepal relationship
Corresponding author:
Peng Lin, Institute of Urban Governance, Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Email: penglin@gz.gov.cn
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/20578911211019255
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2021, Vol. 6(3) 221–237
Special issue article
Introduction
The past decade has witnessed a substantial growth of China’s provision of humanitarian aid and
the growing importance of humanitarian affairs in its diplomatic strategies. Since the early 2000s,
China has become one of the largest non-OECD humanitarian aid providers. Since 2018, the
country has emerged as the second largest fund contributor to the United Nations (UN) peace-
keeping operations and an increasingly active participant in the UN-led multilateral humanitarian
operations (SCIO, 2020). China is also catching up with such traditional regional powers as Japan,
Australia, and India and becoming a leading humanitarian aid donor in the Asia-Pacific region
(HAG et al., 2019). However, contrasting to China’s growing presence in international humanitar-
ian affairs, insufficient scholarly attention has been paid to the development of its humanitarian
actions and their relevance to diplomacy and world politics. Within the small body of literature on
the diplomatic implications of China’s humanitarian action, much of what had been written fell
either under the broad domains of development studies and foreign policy analysis (Hirono, 2018;
Huang et al., 2019; Woods, 2008; Xue, 2014) or less significantly in the field of peacekeeping
studies (Zürcher, 2019; He, 2018; Gill and Huang, 2009; Kumar, 2008). Neither has the emerging
scholarship on the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) provided many insights for the study of China’s
humanitarian action and its diplomatic impacts (Carrai et al., 2020; Bastiaansen, 2019; Zhang,
2019; Jones and Zeng, 2019; Benabdallah, 2018). This article addresses the gap by investigating
China’s evolving humanitarian diplomacy with empirical evidence from China’s disaster-related
aid to Nepal over the past decade. Built upon the analytical tools from the theories of humanitarian
diplomacy, fragmented authoritarianism, and advocacy networks, this article suggests that huma-
nitarian diplomacy is not a unitary political arena dominated by the monolithic Chinese state.
Instead, it is a dynamic public sphere increasingly open for various stakeholders and subject to
influences from a variety of actors. This article calls for particular attention to the growing
importance of newly empowered actors, both inside and outside of the state, in China’s evolving
humanitarian diplomacy.
The article, drawing upon open-source material and interviews mainly conducted in 2016–
2019, proceeds in five subsequent parts. The first engages in theoretical debates related to the
conceptualization of non-Development Assistance Committee (DAC) humanitarian donors. The
second briefly reviews the development of China’s overall humanitarian diplomacy since 1949,
with particular focus on the changes in the past two decades. The third part traces the growth of
China’s humanitarian assistance to Nepal and examines the key driving forces behind it. The fourth
part discusses the legacies of China’s humanitarian assistance to Nepal and their broader impli-
cations for China’s humanitarian diplomacy. The fifth offers a conclusive remark.
Making sense of humanitarian diplomacy in non-DAC countries
Humanitarian diplomacy (HD) has emerged as a widely accepted analytical framework to under-
stand the growing significance of humanitarian action in states’foreign policies and world politics.
However, there have been debates among both researchers and practitioners about HD’s nature and
political relevance. These differences can be broadly divided into the value-based or the idealist
school and the more interest-based realist school. The first strand of literature is built more firmly
upon the traditions of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), UN organizations,
and Western Christian countries. Studies from this school highlight the universal values and
political autonomy of humanitarian action. Such school of analyses also emphasizes the
222 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 6(3)
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