Assessing Motives in Northeast Asian Aid Allocations: China, Japan, and Korea as a Collective Group and as Individual Donors

The landscape of global foreign aid is changing with the growing number of new donors, especially in Asia. While Japan is no longer overwhelmingly dominant, complexity grows as China is becoming increasingly influential as an emerging donor, and Korea is rising to be a considerable donor by joining the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. In this context, there have been numerous controversies concerning East Asian donors, and even debates about the East Asian model of aid apart from the more traditional Western models. However, only a handful of studies have examined donor behavior empirically. This study aims to assess the motives in the foreign aid allocations of China, Japan, and Korea as a group and as individual donors by methodically and empirically examining aid patterns and the East Asian model of aid. This research shows that the most important drivers of aid allocations of East Asian donor are economic, as opposed to political-strategic or humanitarian, which is viewed as typical for China, Japan, and Korea. Furthermore, this characteristic of valuing economic factors can be seen more clearly in Asia and other regions compared to in Africa. However, on an individual country level, economic motives are the primary determinants of aid allocations only for China. Japan prioritizes humanitarian factors over economic ones, and Korea does not reveal a clear pattern either way.