Paper short abstract:

The old ties between foreign aid and national commercial interest are being revived in East Asia. This paper analyses the shifting politics of partnerships in East Asia by examining how Japan repositions itself to forge new partnerships with East Asian donors as well as private sector corporations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the changing aid narrative that is reviving the old ties between foreign aid and national interest in East Asia. Such trends may be unfolding globally, but East Asian donors are particularly receptive to the shifting aid narrative due to the historical trajectories of state-centric development experiences. Here emerging donors' South-South cooperation built on the spirit of solidarity combines with East Asia's mercantilist approaches to development to produce a form of East-South alliance that emphasizes mutually beneficial horizontal partnerships and the state's role in promoting trade, investment, and development cooperation as a package. In this milieu the idea of public-private partnerships takes on a new meaning, allowing for active participation of private corporations, small and large, in state-led development cooperation intended to pursue national interest. In the meantime, the role assigned by the state to civil society organizations is shrinking fast. The paper examines the politics of these partnerships in East Asia with a particular focus on the process by which Japan, one of Asia's only two DAC member countries, realigns its development policies with those of other East Asian donors. The growing recognition globally of private finance as an important source for development facilitates this shift. It also helps that the principle of universality underlying the SDGs blurs the distinction between foreign aid and other kinds of development cooperation. The paper argues that the combination of these factors grants Japan leeway to use aid as a 'catalyst' for encouraging private-sector investment abroad by their own private corporations.