Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) offers a regular e-mail notification service for their “what’s new?” section of the website. One of the items in today’s mail was an overview of Japanese Official Development Assistance to China since 1979.
I haven’t the time or the strength right not to get into the politics of this, so if you haven’t been following Sino-Japanese relations lately, just skip this post.
If not, here are the numbers:
3.1331 trillion yen in loan aid (yen loans)
145.7 billion yen in grant aid
144.6 billion yen in technical cooperation
See the page for a detailed breakdown of where the yen loans have gone.
Interestingly, around 21 billion yen in loans has gone towards projects for “promotion of mutual understanding,” including funding for Japanese language study and a public broadcasting infrastructure improvement project.
That sure was money put to good use.
Given the timing of this it seems like MOFA is building a case for turning off the aid spigot.
OK, just signed up for that newsletter.
And I’m going to show this to my student tonight (Mr. JICA). He’ll get a kick out of it.
Not that it will help. In 2009: Lost Memories (http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/05/25/hateful_korean_nationalism.html), characters explain that Japan used aid and investment to “recolonize” Korea.
Damn arab-style backwards paranoid nationalism.