The U.S. foreign aid agency broadly shut down by the Trump administration has long been criticized by Beijing. But as USAID projects wind down, will Beijing step in to try to build influence? Some analysts say although China will want to fill the vacuum, its own economic problems could limit what it will do.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now the acting director of U.S. Agency for International Development, said he will bring the agency's activities in line with the agenda of the new government.
"These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest," he told reporters while visiting El Salvador earlier this week.
USAID had an annual budget of more than $40 billion and managed aid programs around the world, including a China-related program that has become a target of criticism by the White House.
On a "waste and abuse" fact sheet released on Feb. 3, the White House said USAID had given millions of dollars to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. organization working on protections against infectious disease. The organization has been accused of working with Wuhan Institute of Virology on coronavirus research that had caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Both EcoHealth Alliance and the Chinese government have rejected those accusations.
Agency has framed funding as strategy
In recent years, USAID has increasingly framed its funding for China-related programs as a strategy to contain China's global expansion through aid and investments.
An archived page of USAID's now-closed website shows that the agency lauded its "Countering Chinese Influence Fund" as one of its "key accomplishments." The fund "will advance national-security goals" to "build more resilient partners that are able to withstand pressure from the CCP and other malign actors."
Michael Schiffer, former USAID assistant administrator for Asia, told a congressional panel in 2023 that the agency had for more than a decade supported data collection on China's overseas investments through AidData, a research group at the College of William and Mary in the U.S. state of Virginia.
The funding freeze has put at least one such USAID-funded project in financial trouble. Brian Eyler, a researcher at the Stimson Center in Washington, wrote in a public post on Facebook that his project, Mekong Dams Monitor, has difficulty continuing operation because of the freeze.
"We are ordered to stop work on those grants for 90 days pending further review. And that means our Southeast Asia program might not be able to keep the lights on," he wrote.
Eyler's project was launched by the State Department during the first Trump administration to study how dams built by China and other countries on the Mekong River in southeast Asia have negatively affected communities downstream. According to Eyler's post, the project received funding from both the State Department and USAID.
Chinese state media had accused the project of smearing China.
VOA Mandarin reached out to Stimson Center for more details but did not receive a response.
On Wednesday, Rubio said the Trump administration is in the process of identifying programs that are exempted from the funding freeze.
"This [is] not about ending foreign aid. It is about structuring it in a way that furthers the national interest of the United States," Rubio said during his multiday trip to Latin America.
Critics of USAID
USAID also has been a target of Beijing's ire. China's foreign ministry released a report last year accusing USAID programs of corruption and prioritizing the advancement of U.S. interests.
The shutdown of USAID has been met with cheers and celebrations on the Chinese internet, where anti-U.S. narratives permeate. Many users praised Elon Musk, the billionaire and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, for closing the agency.
Musk previously posted on X describing USAID as "a criminal organization" and that it is time "for it to die."
USAID critics
Critics of the funding freeze and the shuttering of USAID worry that Beijing will see this as an opportunity to fill the void left by the U.S.
"China has spent trillions of dollars in numerous countries because it is interested in pulling them into its sphere of influence," U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Coons wrote in The Washington Post.
Steven Balla, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., told VOA Mandarin he agrees with the assessment. But he said China's plan to expand foreign aid is likely to be hindered by its lingering domestic problems.
"You think about youth unemployment; you think about the real estate bubble and so forth," he said. "That might make it difficult for the Xi administration to aggressively expand into new parts of the world because the U.S is pulling back."
Some activists worry that even if China tries to fill the void, certain areas where there once were U.S. aid programs will not receive the same kind of funding, if at all.
A former environmental lawyer in China who now lives in the U.S. told VOA Mandarin that, compared to U.S. aid programs, China's assistance is of a more transactional nature and seeks financial returns. She wants to remain anonymous because she fears harassment from Beijing.
A 2021 report released by China shows that between 2013 and 2018, China had spent $376 billion on foreign aid, 45% of which went to Africa in areas such as agriculture, medical assistance, food supply, disease control, and climate change.
The former environmental lawyer said if it is entirely left for China to provide aid, areas such as women's rights and natural resource management will lose a large portion of funding, if not entirely, because China is not interested in improving local governance.
"There will certainly be a very severe impact on the African people," she said, "which isn't something you'll be able to see within just a day or two."
