China attaches no political conditions to assistance

China attaches no political conditions to assistance - envoy

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-07-02 07:16

UNITED NATIONS - China attaches no political conditions to its development assistance to other developing countries, Chinese special envoy Liu Guijin said Tuesday.

"The primary aim of development assistance or development cooperation is to help the recipient country to realize its social and economic development," Liu, China's special envoy on African affairs, told reporters at the UN Headquarters.

Liu, who is here attending the high-level segment of the UN Economic and Social Council, said that the political and economic environment in many of the developing countries is not the ideal one.

But "we don't have to wait until everything to become perfect," he said, adding that those problems could be resolved "through development, through the tangible help we are providing."

With no conditions attached to its development assistance, China, itself a developing country, does not try to "contradict or to frustrate the efforts of the traditional donors," like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Paris Club members, he said.

"This is from a different approach," he said.

"Democracy has to be adaptable to the concrete national conditions of the developing countries," he noted.

Liu said that in providing official development assistance to other countries, China has always followed three principles, that is, equality, mutual benefit and effectiveness.