Aid as an authoritarian gift: the associations between the Chinese aid and democracy

Abstract

As China’s global economic footprint deepens, growing attention is paid to how its aid and loan programs affect regime trajectories in recipient states. While existing scholarship often speculates that Chinese engagement supports authoritarian durability or undermines democratic institutions, it frequently relies on aggregated aid flows and overlooks variation across regime types and aid modalities. This study addresses that gap by analyzing data from globally harmonized sources, AidData, the China Africa Research Initiative, and Polity V, to assess the relationship between Chinese economic engagement and changes in democratic quality. The findings reveal that, in the African context, higher levels of Chinese aid are consistently associated with increased probabilities of regime autocratization despite volatility detected in the permutation. However, in the global sample, this association is less uniform; interaction models show that hybrid regimes face the greatest risk of autocratization, with even modest increases in aid predicting higher autocratization probabilities. Sectoral disaggregation further refines this pattern: aid directed toward the extractive industries, particularly mining, correlates strongly with autocratization trajectories, whereas aid in transportation sectors is linked to weak democratic improvement, presenting modeling volatility. In addition, the presence of Chinese contract labor exhibits a negative association with autocratization, suggesting a potential, albeit limited, association with democratic resilience. Jointly, these results emphasize that the political effects of Chinese aid are not uniform but instead vary systematically by sector and initial regime type, challenging approaches that treat Chinese aid as politically monolithic.