Overview of Chinese aid for health estimates
| Characteristic | Detail | China’s distinctive engagement in global health11 | China’s engagement with development assistance for health in Africa12 | China’s role as a global health donor in Africa: what can we learn from studying under reported resource flows?13 | China’s silk road and global health14 | Tracking development assistance for health from China, 2007–201715 |
| Definition and scope of health aid* | ||||||
| Flow | Official development assistance (ODA)- like | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
| Other official finance (OOF)-like | N | Y | Y | Y | N | |
| Vague (cannot be determined as ODA or OOF) | N | Y | Y | Y | N | |
| Official investment | N | N | N | Y | N | |
| Other | Refers to ‘health aid’ although no definition provided | N | N | N | Dsbursement of in-kind or financial resources (grants, interest-free/concessional loans) to low-income or middle-income countries | |
| Flow type | Disbursements | Unclear | Y† | Y† | Unclear | Y |
| Commitments | Unclear | N | Y | Unclear | N | |
| Pledges | Unclear | Y | N | Unclear | N | |
| Sector | Health | Unclear | Y | Y | Y | Unclear |
| Population and reproductive health | Unclear | Y | Y | Y | Unclear | |
| Water, sanitation and hygiene | Unclear | Y | Y | N | Unclear | |
| Other | Unclear | Key word search conducted to identify health projects in other sectors (eg, government and civil society) | All social sector projects were manually inspected for health-related projects | N | Included flows that were for the ‘primary purposes of improving or maintaining health’ | |
| Channel | Bilateral | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Multilateral | Unclear | N | N | Y | Y | |
| Time and geographic scope | ||||||
| Time period | 2007–2011 | 2000–2013 | 2000–2012 | 2008–2013 | 2007–2017 | |
| Geography | Africa | Africa | Africa | Global | Global | |
| Results: level of disaggregation | ||||||
| Project count | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | |
| Recipient country | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | |
| Health type | Focus area (eg, diseases) | N | Y | Y | N | Y |
| Activity (eg, surveillance) | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Source of information‡ | ||||||
| AidData | N | Y (uses one of AidData’s Chinese Official Finance datasets) | N | |||
| Government data: budget/financial accounts, yearbook statistics, information systems, websites, and/or reports | Y | Y | Y | |||
| Recipient country information system | N | Y | N | |||
| Academic literature | N | Y | N | |||
| Media reports | Y | Y | N | |||
| Interviews | Y | N | N | N | N | |
| Data use | ||||||
| Source verification process | Notes that inconsistencies were double checked but process used unclear | AidData database adopts a ‘health of record score’ to signal which projects have the most complete and reliable data, in part based on a verification and triangulation process | No process identified | |||
| Ranking system of sources | No process identified | AidData database adopts a ranking system based on resource types, with official government sources at the top and media reports and social media at the lowest level | N/A only Chinese government data used | |||
| Attempt to fill missing financial values | No process identified | No process identified | Not attempted; focused on project counts instead of exact financial estimation | Substitutes median value of the same type of project for missing values | Uses a variety of estimation and regression models to fill in gaps | |
*This category attempts to align with key dimensions of the OECD Creditor Reporting System Aid Activity Database (CRS). Additionally, selected categories were also based on common categorizations used by datasets, like AidData’s Chinese Official Finance dataset. Three of the five studies in the table used an AidData dataset. AidData also attempts to align with OECD CRS standards, although to do so, some additional terminology unique to AidData, such as ‘vague’ finance or ‘pledges’, is included.
†Projects that are ‘in implementation’ or ‘completed’ are included in this analysis. Inclusion of these two project types could be considered a proxy for disbursements. This study uses one of AidData’s Chinese Official Finance datasets, which tracks a project’s status but does not explicitly track disbursements. In this dataset, a project is considered to be ‘in implementation’ if any portion of the intended amount has been disbursed. A project that is ‘completed’ assumes all committed finances have been disbursed.
‡Three of the five studies used a common data source (AidData’s Chinese Official Finance). To report consistently across categories, when a source was not specifically mentioned in an estimate, we defaulted to using AidData’s description of their source data. Some studies opted to include additional data to supplement their studies (eg, multilateral contributions data).