Effective or Not? Modeling China’s Climate Foreign Aid

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, climate change has become a major issue in China’s domestic economic transformation and its international commitments. Foreign aid for climate change (climate aid) acts as a diplomatic tool through which the Xi administration promotes its major-country diplomacy while supporting recipient countries in addressing climate challenges. However, research on the effectiveness of China’s climate aid remains limited. To fill this gap, this paper uses a mixed-methods approach — combining panel data regression analysis with case studies — to examine the effectiveness of China’s climate aid and provide a detailed explanation. The results show that the effectiveness of China’s climate aid is constrained, which is influenced not only by China’s motives for providing climate aid and its own development experience but also by the low priority placed on climate issues in Chinese diplomacy. Additionally, there is a mismatch between how Chinese climate aid is distributed and the actual mitigation and adaptation needs of recipient countries.