India and China, two rising powers with large populations, have substantially increased their foreign aid programmes over the last decade. This seminar will bring together two experts on India and China to ask: what is the purpose of Indian and Chinese foreign aid?

China has achieved major remarkable success with its own development. But rather than join the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) regime of traditional donors, it has instead chosen to construct ties of South-South cooperation with low-income countries, often through bilateral development partnership agreements. What does China's emergence as a net donor, which gives more aid than it receives, tell us about changes in global aid policy? And what does it tell us about China's own vision for its aid policy?

India has pursued policies of South-South cooperation since independence, but only recently has its role in providing foreign assistance to low-income countries become prominent. India's economic growth appears to be providing a basis for real technical cooperation, and the potential for a new type of aid policy. But can a country with widespread internal poverty run an effective foreign aid programme?

About the speakers

Emma Mawdsley is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College. She is a human geographer with a particular interest in the rising powers and the changing politics of development. Her recent work includes a DFID-funded project looking at how domestic audiences within China, India, Russia, Poland and South Africa perceive their development cooperation activities; and work on
Trilateral/Triangular Development Cooperation, as one part of new global development partnerships. Her most recent book is: From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape, published by Zed Books in 2012.

Giles Mohan is Professor of International Development at the UK¹s Open University. He is a human geographer who studies African governance and the transnational connections to and from Africa, especially migrants. His recent work focuses on China's engagement with Africa and has been funded by a series of grants from the Economic and Social Research Council. Giles has published extensively in geography, development studies and African studies journals and has consulted for a range of BBC documentaries on issues of international development. His latest book, with Marcus Power and May Tan-Mullins, entitled China's Resource Diplomacy in Africa: Powering Development? was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2012.