Preface

摘要

The rising powers in international development are rising fast, and China most rapidly of all. As the world moves towards a post-2015 agenda, we are in a very different world from the one where the dominant paradigms around aid and development cooperation evolved. Conventional aid agendas reflect patterns of colonialism; and where, in the system created following the Second World War, European and US leadership and hegemony were a vital element. Even 15 years ago, when the Millennium Development Goals were established, development policy and finance were dominated by flows of expertise and resources from mostly Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to low-income ones, mostly in Africa and Asia. We are now in a far more polycentric and multi-polar, if also uncertain, world. Global partnerships and multi-way cooperation to address shared global challenges around economy and sustainability, along with poverty and inequality wherever they arise, are increasingly the guiding ideas for a new era of development thinking and action.