An Offer Africa Can't Refuse? A Disaggregated Analysis of Chinese Vote Buying and African Debt Pressures in The UN

Abstract: Since the "Go Out Policy" in 1999, China has rapidly become one of the largest aid donors in Africa. Many scholars, politicians and journalists have raised the question if there are ulterior motives to this other than Chinese altruism. One common criticism of China is that they use development finance to get more support in foreign affairs. They have furthermore been accused of "debt trap diplomacy" by providing excessive credit to non-creditworthy countries to gain political influence. This thesis attempts to provide empirical input to this debate by analyzing how the level of Chinese official development finance receipts and debt in African countries affect their voting alignment with China in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Using a dataset of 54 African countries over the period 2000-2014 and a panel regression with country-fixed effects, we find that Chinese official development finance has a significantly positive impact on Sino-African voting alignment in the UNGA. We also find a positive significant relationship between African countries' debt level and alignment to China; however, the magnitude of the relationship is limited.