Page 487 - 2020新世代·新需求：臺灣教育發展的挑戰研討會

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Programme (Cheng & Chan, 2015). With the notion of ‘humanitarian’, these
bilateral organizations, complicatedly driven by political, economic, and cultural

motivations, render their ODA to the Global South through the promotion of
industrial development, social infrastructure and economic growth. As emerging
donors (except Japan), the leading countries in this region are not so certain to play
greater responsible role in aiding the Global South.

If we examine the latest data in terms of ODA as a percentage of Gross
National Income (GNI), we reveal a passive role that East Asian countries have
presented internationally. Figure 3 indicates that all East Asian countries only
allocated small proportion for international assistance in 2019. Compared to other

leading Western countries, these figures are significantly low in Japan (0.29%),
Korea (0.15%), Taiwan (0.05%) and Thailand (0.03%). UN has urged advanced
economies to contribute 0.7% of their GNI. However, most missed this target (except
Turkey, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and UK). Asian countries are far below

this standard. Focusing on the same data over the past decades, people realize that
East Asian countries have not improved this trend substantially and even faced
a declining development. Figure 4 confirms in general that their performances
are much lower than OECD DAC countries and the percentages are fluctuating

among countries. Japan remains between 0.17% and 0.29% since 2007 while Korea
maintains a slight improvement after 2006 up to 0.15% only. As to Taiwan, this
figure is obviously dropping over the decade, from almost 0.1% in 2005 to 0.05%
in 2019. As far as Thailand is concerned, its scale is still at minimum level. Turkey

is the only exception with rising ODA right after the financial crisis in 2008. Now
it already contributes 1.15% of GNI in 2019. In sum, as an emerging area, East
Asia seems to be inactive in taking responsibility of helping low-income countries
having an obvious gap with traditional donors with respect to the magnitude of

ODA.

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