Fixing China's humanitarian aid architecture: what are the lessons from the European Union and the United States?

ABSTRACT

The global humanitarian situation has deteriorated drastically since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the Russian–Ukrainian war. The European Union and the United States are forerunners to providing global humanitarian aid, but China's visibility and role in global humanitarian affairs has significantly increased. Although China has been contributing more, its humanitarian aid concept remains vague, its aid mechanism is fragmented, and its approach to providing aid is rigid. These factors make China unprepared for tackling future humanitarian challenges. There are notable divergences in terms of concepts and mechanisms for and approaches to humanitarian aid among the European Union, the United States and China. Despite the pitfalls in the humanitarian aid architectures of the European Union and United States, China can learn from them to strive for an architecture that can help it aid more effectively. In particular, China should build coherence and consistency among aid concept, mechanism and approach, streamline aid mechanism, and give full play of non-governmental actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Third World Quarterly is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)