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Japanese Official Development Assistance to Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Martin Rudner
Martin Rudner
Affiliation:
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa
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Extract

Japan's involvement as a donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) can be traced back, historically, to post-second world war arrangements for war damage reparations. At that time, the late 1940s, early 1950s, Japan was itself a low-income country, whose industries had suffered widespread dislocation and ruin due to war. Yet, the new post-war Japanese government, eager to work its way back into the comity of nations, undertook to make reparation for the destruction of economic assets in the territories that had been fought over. The reparations agreements concluded in the 1950s involved many of the developing countries on the Asia/Pacific Rim—reflecting the pattern of wartime conquest—some of them independent, others still under European colonial rule. Thailand and the People's Republic of China were excluded from reparations, the former due to its wartime co-belligerent status, the latter since it was unrecognized by Japan, ironically in view of their subsequent emergence as the largest recipients of Japanese bilateral ODA by the 1980s. In the event, by the time Japanese reparations had become available, reconstruction assistance had already begun to give way to post-reconstruction support for public sector economic growth. A greater part of these reparations consisted of deliveries of Japanese capital goods and equipment, e.g., cargo ships, through transfer mechanisms designed to match Japan's re-emergent industrial export capabilities with the import requirements of Southeast Asian economic development.By way of contrast with the contemporary Western orientation in development assistance to Asia, driven by a 'Big Push' syndrome towards relatively large-scale infrastructure projects through such mechanisms as the Colombo Plan, the Japanese experience with reparations provided from the outset a closer strategic integration between Japan's international donor obligations, on the one hand, and its export strategy and dynamic competitive advantages in international trade, on the other.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1989 , pp. 73 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Western donor aid certainly has not ignored commercial and political objectives and opportunities, although they have not achieved the policy-level integration and purposefulness of objectives associated with the Japanese donor experience. Japan joined the Colombo Plan in October 1954, but limited its participation to technical assistance programmes. Reparation payments, firstly to Burma, began in November 1954. The first yen credit was extended to India in 1958 and in 1961 the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund was established. By 1961, Japan had joined the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. An Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency was set up in 1962, and was succeeded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 1974. Grant aid for capital assistance was introduced for Laos in 1968. Reparation payments were finally concluded in April 1977.Google ScholarThe Developing Countries and Japan (Tokyo: Association for Promotion of International Cooperation, 1983).Google Scholar

2 Reparations payments absorbed more than half of Japanese ODA until 1965. Reparations subsequently declined speedily, and finally were terminated in the mid-1970s.

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8 Ibid., Table 13.

9 In Canada's case, separate specialized organizations were set up to manage ODA efforts in research and development (International Development Research Centre) and energy (Petro Canada International Assistance Corporation), however the bulk of ODA (95%) is managed through CIDA.Google Scholar

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17 Data on ODA allocations by income groups of recipient countries, LLDCs and LDCs, is provided in Ibid., Table II.G.1.

18 Ibid., Table II.E.2.

19 Data in this paragraph is derived from ibid., Tables II.F.1, II.F.2, II.F.3.

20 Japanese Contribution to Economic Development of the Kingdom of Thailand through OECF Loans (Tokyo: Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, 06 1983), p. 10.Google Scholar

21 Japan's Official Development Assistance 1984 Annual Report (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, n.d. (1985)), p. 2.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 9, 13.

23 Data on the aid performance of various technical cooperation programmes is provided in Ibid., pp. 12–15.

24 Ibid., p. 14.

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