Dawit Alemu is an agricultural economist currently serving as manager for the Bilateral Ethio-Netherlands Effort for Food, Income and Trade (BENEFIT) partnership programme in Ethiopia. He is a member of the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). He served as the director of the Agricultural Economics, Extension and Gender Research Directorate and was senior researcher at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Robin Bush is Country Representative for The Asia Foundation, Malaysia. She teaches classes on public policy, contemporary Asia, and Southeast Asian politics at the Singapore Management University (SMU). She holds a PhD in political science and publishes on issues of religion and development, Indonesian politics, and migration. She has over 20 years’ experience in international development in Southeast Asia, leading and managing programmes related to religion and development, governance reform, and knowledge and innovation ecosystems.
Lídia Cabral is a Research Fellow at IDS, University of Sussex. She is a social scientist with 20 years’ experience in international development, working on the politics of aid, South–South relations, and agri-food public policy. Recent research focuses on Brazil’s engagement with international development and cooperation initiatives in Africa. It explores how domestic agrarian politics have shaped cooperation practices and technology transfers abroad. She is currently leading research on the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India, examining how South–South technology exchanges are framed around epic narratives about the past and their celebration of the science of modernity.
Yingdan Cao is a PhD candidate at the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing. She has participated in a number of international cooperation and research projects, such as the China–Africa Poverty Reduction Cooperation Forum and the China-ASEAN Agricultural Cooperation Project. She contributed to the report of the 40th anniversary of China’s agricultural cooperation with the World Bank. Her research interest focuses on China’s Green Revolution narratives and their roles in shaping China’s South‑South cooperation.
Richard Carey is a former OECD Director of Development Cooperation. He is currently Chair of the International Advisory Committee of the China International Development Research Network (CIDRN) in Beijing, and a Senior Fellow at the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) in Accra, Ghana. In his work with the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), he was highly involved in development policy and practice issues for more than 30 years. He was a member of the IDS Advisory Committee on Rising Powers and a founding co-chair of the China-DAC Study Group in 2009. Carey holds an MSc (Econ) (London School of Economics and Political Science).
Evan Due is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Asia Research, University of British Columbia, Canada and Senior Advisor to the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) in Beijing. He has held executive positions with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada in Singapore and India, and with the Canadian International Development Agency (now Global Affairs Canada) in Ottawa, New Delhi, and Islamabad. He represented Canada at the OECD Development Assistance Committee, and in various multilateral forums. His professional interests include public policy, political economy, international trade, sustainable development, and economic governance. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Sussex, UK.
Jing Gu is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for Rising Powers and Global Development at IDS, University of Sussex. She also leads the IDS China Centre. Jing has extensive experience of research and advisory work on governance, business, and development finance, with a focus on China’s international development policy and sustainable development. She has led many interdisciplinary research projects involving multi-country teams, including groundbreaking pioneering research on China’s outward investment in Africa. She is an academic editor of Third World Quarterly, and a member of the UK Research and Innovation International Development Peer Review College.
Huib Huyse heads the Sustainable Development Research Group at the Research Institute for Labour and Society (HIVA‑KU Leuven) in Belgium. A substantial part of his research and evaluation work is policy or practice oriented and covers topics related to development cooperation and global development. Thematically, his work spans research on sustainable supply chains, the role of civil society organisations in low-income countries, citizen science, and monitoring and evaluation. He is co-chair holder of a Research Chair on decent work and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He coordinated research on the South–South cooperation activities of China in Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and DR Congo.
Hongbo Ji is the Country Representative of The Asia Foundation in China, a position she has held since 2016. She has been leading the Foundation’s work on China’s constructive global engagement, including efforts by Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to work internationally. Prior to joining The Asia Foundation, Hongbo worked on bilateral and multilateral donor-funded poverty reduction and rural development projects in China. She also has five years’ diplomatic experience with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Xiaoyun Li is currently a Chair Professor at China Agricultural University (CAU) and Honorary Dean of College of International Development and Global Agriculture (CIDGA). He is also Chair of the Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST), and Chair of the China International Development Research Network (CIDRN). He is a Senior Advisor for the Chinese government, the World Bank, the United Nations, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and many other international development organisations. His research covers international development, aid, agriculture, poverty reduction, gender and development, and sustainable resource management.
Anthea Mulakala is the Senior Director for International Development Cooperation at The Asia Foundation. She has more than 25 years’ experience leading and managing programmes across Asia in reproductive health, conflict prevention and peace building, governance, and regional cooperation. Over the last decade, she has honed her expertise on Asian development cooperation, particularly understanding how rising powers such as China and India are transforming the twenty-first century aid and development landscape. She also writes, publishes, and speaks extensively on these issues.
Sebastian Prantz is a Senior Country Manager China, GIZ GmbH, Germany. He graduated from the University of Vienna with a Diploma in International Development, focusing on developing economics as well as cooperation with China. He is a development cooperation practitioner, and has worked in China since 2020 supporting Sino-German cooperation on sustainable development as well as the initiation of triangular cooperation projects between China, Germany, and developing countries.
Lindan Tan is an international scholar in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and is a PhD candidate in the School of Public Administration, Sichuan University. A substantial part of her research covers topics related to NGOs, non-profit organisations, civil society, local governance, urban governance, and basic public service. She specialises in research on the assessment of organisational capabilities and evaluation of policy performance. She has participated in several research projects of the National Social Science Fund in China, and she is the main person responsible for two projects funded by Sichuan University. Email: lindan.tan@hotmail.com.
Karin Costa Vazquez is a Scholar at Fudan University, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at O.P. Jindal Global University, and senior consultant to the United Nations, leading the development of the 2022–2025 Strategic Framework of the UN Office for South–South Cooperation. Her research interests include international cooperation for sustainable development and international political economy, with a focus on the BRICS countries and the new development banks. She has held advisory positions in multilateral development banks, UN agencies, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil. She regularly contributes to leading journals and media outlets worldwide.
Jiajun Xu is an Assistant Professor and the Executive Deputy Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, and the Invited Researcher at the Public Policy Research Center of the Counsellors’ Office of the State Council of China. Jiajun worked in the United Nations and the World Bank and currently acts as the General Secretary of the Global Research Consortium on Economic Structural Transformation. She is also the co-coordinator of the International Research Initiative on Development Financing Institutions Working Groups. Her research focuses on development financing and global economic governance. Jiajun holds a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford.
Xiuli Xu is Professor of the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University, Beijing. Her main research interests include global development governance and its daily operation, China’s overseas investment and foreign aid, the evolution of development thinking, and developmental state building in African countries. She is the first author of a series of articles on China’s aid and overseas investment published in journals such as World Development, and World Economics and Politics. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and IDS. Email: xxl@cau.edu.cn.
Jiantuo Yu is Deputy Secretary-General of the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF). Before joining CDRF in 2009, he worked at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (2001–05), the Center for Human and Economic Development Studies (Peking University) (2005–07), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) China Country Office (2007–08). He was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in 2018 and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Oxford University in 2008. He works in the areas of urbanisation and regional development, international development cooperation, poverty and inequality, and theory and practice of the human development approach.
Chuanhong Zhang is Associate Professor at the Department of Development Management, College of Humanities and Development Studies, and Director of the Center for International Development Aid Studies at the College of International Development and Global Agriculture (CIDGA), China Agricultural University. She also serves as the Secretary of the China International Development Research Network (CIDRN). Her research interests cover China’s poverty reduction and rural development, China–Africa agricultural cooperation, foreign aid, and gender and development.
Xiaomin Zhang works at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Beijing Foreign Studies University. He obtained his PhD in 2005 (School of International Studies, Peking University). He is also a part-time researcher at the Center of Global Governance, School of International Studies, Peking University, a part-time researcher at the Center for African Studies, Institute of International Strategic Studies, Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a member of the Chinese Society of African Historical Studies, and a member of the China International Development Research Network (CIDRN). His studies cover China’s modern and contemporary foreign policy, China’s foreign aid, and Sino-African relations.
Yu Zheng is Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. His research interests include international development, international political economy, and global governance. He received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and a postdoctoral fellowship from Harvard University. Previously, he was Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Governance and Foreign Investment in China, India and Taiwan: Credibility, Flexibility, and International Business (2014, University of Michigan Press). He has published in journals such as Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Socio-Economic Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Third World Quarterly.