After a time away from blogging I have finally found my way back to it, admittedly slightly intimidated by the blinking cursor before me and the seemingly insurmountable amount of news, stories and random quips I've been unable to comment on. I can never quite sort out whether the moment to do so has passed... ah, well. Nevermind: the Yale conference was a great success, as was my time spent traveling through the Northeast. Regardless, it's great to be back.
Among the first stories that caught my eye (one of many, to be sure), is a piece by Paul Collier in last week's Guardian on aid programmes. The reason it caught my eye is that it left me somewhat confused. Collier notes that the world's largest aid programme has been Chinese assistance to the U.S. Its outcome, he further observes, gives credence to the claim of conditional aid:
Chinese aid to America was provided in NGO-approved form: the US government has been free to use the money in any way it chose. But unconditional aid can be perilous: on occasion it is important for donors to ensure that money is spent not as the government prefers, but in a way that would be in the best interests of the society. Chinese aid to the US has been like EU aid to Chad, but on the grand scale: China paid for Iraq.
A seemingly valid point, though it appears that Collier may be slightly confused between a loan and foreign aid, leading him to proffer a rather muddled argument. Indeed, the Chinese purchase of U.S. bonds is not really "aid" by any definition of the term. If we're concerned with the larger global imbalances, then a much better analysis is that by Martin Wolf in the FT. If not, then I'm not sure that Collier is saying anything that hasn't already been said before, only now attempting to do so with China as his main focus (jumping on the bandwagon, perhaps?). Am I missing something?