After The Cold War Sino-US Comparative Study Assistance To ASEAN

Foreign aid, which can also be called “aid diplomacy”, refers to that a countryprovides assistance to those disaster affected or undeveloped countries to help thememerge from difficulties or to promote their economic and social development withinits strength capability through supplies, loans, infrastructure construction and so on. Innew century, as one form of economic diplomacy, foreign aid plays an increasinglyimportant role in promoting the bilateral and multilateral diplomatic relations betweendonor countries and recipient countries, improving the soft power and internationalinfluence of donor countries.As the largest developing and developed countries in the world, both China andthe United States have long foreign aid history and made brilliant achievement. Till2011, ASEAN has been the third biggest trade partner of China and the fifth biggesttrade partner of America, and kept close political relationship as well as economicexchanges. With an important location in Asia and pacific area, ASEAN will not beignored in the geopolitical strategy of China and America. Therefore, it will becomeone of the battlefields for competitions between China and the United States in thefuture.After the cold war, both china and America have kept on providing aids forASEAN. However, due to distinctions in national character, economic strength,history and culture, China and America have some distinctions in aid property,purpose and methods, which poses influence on their aid effect on ASEAN. Thispaper intends to take “post-cold war” as the time node, to retrospect the history ofbilateral aid toward ASEAN with time as the main line. And then, this paper willlaunch a comparative analysis between China and America on aids toward ASEANfrom the aspects of aid concept, character, purpose, aid method, and aid effect, andwith the help of some cases. At last, this paper will make a conclusion on the basis ofthe above analysis, and put forward some personal thinking and suggestions on howto improve china’s aid quality and effect toward ASEAN.