As the world enters a new era of great-power competition, the United States and other high-income Western countries insist that they offer a more honest, open partnership with developing countries than do their rivals—especially China. They argue that freedom and democracy are the best pathways to development for low-income countries. They decry, for instance, Chinese investments and projects in sub-Saharan Africa as opaque, exploitative, and guilty of stoking corruption. And they trumpet the merits of the aid that many Western countries deliver to poorer ones.
But in truth, wealthy Western donor countries are not always honest about the assistance they provide. They find ways to exaggerate their real commitments through creative and dubious accounting practices meant to expand the definition of development-aid spending. And when it comes to the other category of assistance that wealthy countries owe to developing ones—finance to help the global South mitigate and adapt to climate change—rich countries fall egregiously short of what they have pledged, which is in turn tragically short of what poorer ones need.
