True or false. Is France paying 100 million euros in development aid to China?

The vice-president of the National Rally Sébastien Chenu denounces the payment of public development aid to China, the second world power, by France, only the seventh world power.

The budgetary debates take a new turn on Monday, December 2, with the return of the Social Security finance bill to the National Assembly. Prime Minister Michel Barnier has already admitted that he will “probably definitely” have recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution to have the law adopted, failing to succeed in gathering a majority for its text, then exposing oneself to the risk of a motion of censure.

Among the opponents of the text is the National Rally. The party’s vice-president, Sébastien Chenu, guest on Franceinfo’s 8:30 a.m. on Friday, November 29, estimated that the government had not considered all avenues for savings. In particular, he proposed eliminating public development aid that France, the seventh world power, pays to China, the second world power. “We are paying, I believe, 100 million euros to China. Does China need development aid?”he asked himself.

And in fact, France has paid tens of millions of euros to China each year to help it develop. It was even more than the figures put forward by Sébastien Chenu. In 2020, France spent 140 million euros in public development aid for China, according to a report by Marc Le Furthen deputy Les Républicains des Côtes-d’Armor on behalf of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, annexed to the finance bill for the year 2024. 121 million euros in 2019. 110 million euros in 2018. China was one of the ten countries that France helped the most. Part of these amounts are loans, but we do not know the proportion.

A senatorial report as part of the finance bill for the year 2022 provides more information on this public development aid from France to China. According to him, in 2019, nearly 60% of this aid corresponding to “school fees”or expenditure in favor of Chinese students educated in French university establishments. More than 15 million euros made it possible to spend around ten projects in line with France’s climate commitments, in particular projects in favor of biodiversity, biomass production and natural gas.

The report adds that, if the French Development Agency grants loans to China, Beijing also acquires part of the bonds issued by the agency. “Thus, the interest for China in using AFD financing offers would be based less on a financial issue – insofar as this country does not have difficulty accessing financing on the markets – than on the desire to create and maintain links with France “concludes the report.

It should be noted that there are no more recent figures than those for 2020 on France’s official development assistance to China, because, “since the start of 2022, France has made the decision to no longer count its interventions in China as official development assistance”announced a report of the Senate Finance Committee, also annexed to the finance bill for the year 2024.

Decision taken precisely because China is a great power, even if the OECD still classifies it among the countries that can benefit from development aid because its gross national income per capita is not as high as in the other major countries. powers.

Nevertheless, France continues to help, but without transparency on the amounts. In 2021, for example, it spent 64 million euros on tuition fees for Chinese students in France, while indicating that it had spent nothing on China in terms of public aid. development, whereas school fees were previously part of this type of aid. Today, the French Development Agency also continues its activities in China, but “without, however, these being financed by State appropriations”indicates another senatorial report.

Marc Le Fur denounced this situation in a previous reportannexed to the finance bill for the year 2023. It called on the government to “get out of ambiguity”. He wrote: “The treatment reserved for China is therefore very paradoxical: as a developing country, it still benefits from French aid without the latter being valued as public development aid. a gesture of pure budgetary altruism that France is making to a country richer than it.”