Report from W&M’s AidData garners international attention

Excellence

AidData has tracked $2.2 trillion in Chinese loans and grants across over 200 countries worldwide from 2000-2023, with project locations visualized here. (Image courtesy AidData)

On Tuesday, AidData, an international development research lab at William & Mary, released a groundbreaking dataset and accompanying report detailing China's overseas lending and grant-giving activities in 200 countries.

The report, which relies on data collected by 126 student fact-finders, including more than 100 undergraduates, provides the first-ever global picture of all the country's cross-border financial operations, tracking over $2.2 trillion across more than 30,000 projects and activities in low- to high-income nations.

The announcement was met with significant interest from major media outlets around the world, including the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, The Economist and NPR.

"This landmark report is yet another example of William & Mary's exceptional research ecosystem designed for impact," said Alyson Wilson, vice provost for research. "At W&M, students, faculty and staff are empowered to bring forward bold ideas, work at the edge of knowledge and catalyze meaningful change."

Earlier versions of AidData's award-winning Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset have led to more than 250 publications that have been cited over 4,000 times in academic literature and 450 times by leading journalists.

AidData's work doesn't stop at China. It also uses geospatial data to undertake rigorous impact evaluations and large-scale surveys of development policymakers and practitioners in low- and middle-income countries.

"AidData's organizational calling card is helping decision-makers tackle seemingly unsolvable problems which require the creation of granular data or innovative methods that do not yet exist," said AidData's Executive Director Brad Parks '03.

Since its inception in 2009, the research lab has become a go-to provider of data and analysis for policymakers and practitioners in dozens of countries.

Top media mentions

AidData's announcement generated a wave of global media coverage.

BBC's flagship news documentary program, "Panorama," covered findings relevant to the United Kingdom in a breaking-news special. Parks and several of the project's researchers were featured. The BBC has extensively covered AidData's past work, but this dataset and report were of special interest as they cover China's lending and grant-giving to high-income countries like the U.K.

In addition to Panorama, the BBC broadcast the news globally, including via the flagship BBC World Service radio.

The report also revealed that the U.S. is the largest recipient of Chinese overseas lending among high-income countries, a finding that sparked significant interest from the media.

In a virtual event, William & Mary graduate and senior national correspondent for CNN David Culver '09 discussed the findings with Parks and AidData researcher Sailor Miao '24.

Key media coverage:

• The BBC wrote two stories: one focusing on the U.K. and one broader story.
• The Washington Post wrote two stories: one on Chinese loans to the U.S. broadly and one on loans to U.S. tech and infrastructure projects.
• The New York Times
• The Economist wrote two pieces: one focusing on the U.S. and one on Chinese lending in high-income countries.
• CNN
• The Associated Press
• Newsweek
• Reuters
• The Globe and Mail
• Japan's national public broadcaster, NHK TV

"The widespread media attention this announcement received speaks to the difficulty and importance of what was accomplished," said Parks. "Beijing's overseas lending and grant-giving portfolio is shrouded in secrecy. To document its true scale, scope and composition, an extraordinary data collection effort was required."

Empowering bold ideas

From inception to present day, close student-faculty collaboration has defined AidData's development. The research lab was born out of Parks' honors thesis, and students have continued to shape AidData's trajectory.

In 2012, Parks was approached by Austin Strange '12, who asked if AidData was investigating China's overseas lending. That one question, combined with Strange's tenacity and vision, laid the groundwork for today's success. Over the course of several years, a methodology was developed and honed to track Chinese investments on an extremely granular level using all open-source information - something no one had done before.

"None of this would have happened were it not for Austin's boldness, his willingness to ask difficult questions and come up with innovative solutions," said Parks. "Thanks to his idea, hundreds of W&M students have had an opportunity to be part of this research enterprise."

One of those students was Katherine Walsh '18. Joining AidData as a first-year student, she got involved with the China research group, also known as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) team.

Walsh now serves as a senior program manager for the TUFF team and has played a key leadership role as the research lab expands the scope of its China work, to include financial flows to high-income countries.

The current TUFF team. Walsh is fifth from the left in the second row. (Photo courtesy of Sam Gruber '24/AidData) TUFF team staff and student research assistants celebrating the launch in 2021 of an earlier version of AidData's global dataset tracking Chinese development finance. (Photo courtesy of Carla Talbert/GRI)

"I really appreciate that we have a diverse set of individuals who work at AidData," said Walsh. "It's a very open environment where people at all levels are encouraged to share ideas. That kind of environment breeds innovation, which is what we're trying to do with the data products we release."

Walsh's trajectory from research assistant to senior program manager is not an anomaly. A good number of students have been hired as they graduated.

In total, AidData has employed over 2,000 undergraduate students, according to Parks. Working across the lab's three programmatic units, they gain skills as varied as data collection and analysis, geospatial mapping and data coding.

"I've been grateful for the balance between structured support and creative latitude at AidData," said Ethan Robertson '27, a computational & applied mathematics & statistics and economics double major. "I'm encouraged to take initiative and be inventive about how I'm tackling a research question, but given guidance when I need it."

Why did AidData come to be at William & Mary? It's in the mission, says Parks.

"'William & Mary convenes great minds and hearts to meet the most pressing needs of our time,'" he recited. "Those aren't just words on a page. They are lived and breathed everyday down the brick paths and across the halls and classrooms of this university. That's why I never left after I found my home here in 1999. This is where big ideas live and where you're given the confidence and resources to make them happen."

AidData has been part of William & Mary's Global Research Institute (GRI) for the past 15 years. However, as announced in a news article, the lab recently became a stand-alone unit that reports directly to the vice provost for research. AidData and GRI will continue to share close quarters once the two organizations move to the new Robert M. Gates Hall next year.

Catherine Tyson, Communications Specialist

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