Suchergebnisse

Natural disasters strike at people's lives across the world but hit underdeveloped countries and societies' poorest hardest. Those living in the Asia-Pacific region are significantly more likely to experience natural disaster than those in any other part of the world. China is one of the most exposed to natural disasters, with a long history of devastating events and remains at high risk. China has undertaken major disaster risk reduction (DRR) reforms. Importantly, China is also increasingly committed to international cooperation over DRR within a Sendai Framework. Adopting a Human Security perspective, this article explains and critically evaluates China's DRR reforms. It highlights China's increased willingness to collaborate with international agencies over knowledge exchange and capacity building to improve its domestic DRR and contribute to the international DRR system. The study argues that China's reforms are a work in progress, but demonstrating improvement. It argues that China's expressed wish for closer international DRR cooperation is a new opportunity to mainstream China and it is incumbent on the international community and Chinese Government to build on emerging collaboration and grasp this long-overdue opportunity.

China is establishing itself as a new international aid donor. This study explains China's emerging approach to international development assistance. The paper addresses the question of how far China's understanding of "development" is an appropriate basis for genuinely "win-win" relationships? The paper explores this question by examining China's relationship with Southeast Asia. China is re-emphasising its commitment and partnership credentials with neighbouring states, some of whom have many people living in poverty and as countries are in need of development assistance. The paper identifies key facets of China's approach to international development, examines economic, political and strategic factors underpinning China's approach in Southeast Asia. Adopting a Human Security perspective, it assesses China's development contribution with reference to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar and highlights popular opposition. The study finds that Chinese trade and investment are making a significant contribution to the region's economic growth. However, the analysis identifies two problems in China's approach, an over-reliance on the level of state-to-state relations and too narrow a domain of engagement centred upon economic cooperation. China needs to incorporate a societal engagement strategy highlighting transparency and accountability of Chinese corporate behaviour. It also needs to re-balance its approach by emphasising human capital capability and capacity-building across the non-economic social and cultural domains. China's approach to international development is a rapid learning process and is emerging, but still has further to go.