How Much Yuan Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth?

• In Event: Economic Coercion in Global Politics

Abstract

Does China use its foreign aid to buy supports from non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)? In their seminal work, Kuziemko and Werker (2006) provides convincing evidence that the US uses foreign aid as a bribe to increase supports from non-permanent members of the UNSC. In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent China utilizes its foreign aid politically at the UNSC. We argue that China disburses more aid to non-permanent members of the Security Council, and the effect is stronger if non-permanent members seem to be neutral a priori: compared to countries that are expected to support the Chinese position and countries that are expected to support the U.S. position, those swing countries who can switch their position in support of China or the U.S. are the member countries that would witness the largest aid increase during their service at the UNSC. Using Chinese aid data between 2000 and 2014 by AidData, we demonstrate that Chinese aid increases in general when a country is elected to serve at the UNSC and especially when a country is deemed politically neutral between China and the U.S. Our empirical findings show that the effect is more salient in later periods.

Authors

• Su-Hyun Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

• Byungwon Woo, Yonsei University