How the African Public Views China＇s Aid to Africa

As a vital part of China's foreign relations,China's aid to Africa has scored great achievements.Based on data from the Afrobarometer Survey in 2010 and data from the database of China's aid to Africa in 2000-2010 co-created by the US Center for Global Development and AidData,this paper dissects the macro-and micro-level determinants of the African public's perception of the effectiveness of aid from China through an empirical analysis.As descriptive statistics reveal,the African public has a highly positive view of aid from China despite country differences.According to our further analysis of a multilevel model,aid recipients with higher levels of democracy and economic development have a more favorable view of aid from China,while the size and sector of aid from China are not correlated with public favorability.At the micro-level,age,gender,education,race and media consumption are positively correlated with the public perception of aid.In conclusion,China must refocus its future aid programs on livelihood and welfare that directly benefit local people,rather than simply increasing the amount of aid.In delivering its commitments to Africa,China must also attach importance to public communication and "telling the China story " in its international affairs to improve its national image and gain more recognition by the African people.

The effect of domestic and foreign trade coordination on technological innovation： complements or substitutes？

Based on the theory of technology spillover in international trade, this paper discusses the technological innovation effect of trade by taking the influence of domestic trade into account. Under the constraint of the production possibility frontier, there is either complementarity or substitutability between domestic and foreign trade. It must be decided whether resources should be concentrated in one of the sectors （trade specialization） or instead allocated equally （trade equalization） between the two sectors. This paper firstly discusses how domestic trade and foreign trade work together to influence technological innovation, and how trade equalization and specialization affect different types of innovation. Using a provincial-level panel dataset from 2007 to 2015 in China, this paper constructs the indicators of domestic and foreign trade linkage and examines the impact of trade on innovation. The findings show that trade equalization mainly promotes incremental innovation, while trade specialization improves radical innovation. Thus, in the area of incremental innovation, attention should be paid to the equalized development of domestic and foreign trade, while in areas pursuing radical innovation, emphasis should be put on the specialization of the trade sector, avoiding equal allocation of resources to the two sectors.