China, the world’s second-largest economy, has boosted funding of multilateral development institutions tenfold since 2010, but its voting power and presence in international bodies still lag its economic weight, a new study released on Thursday has found.
Beijing’s funding for development banks reached US5.25 billion in 2025, but slashed its support for funds like Gavi, a public-private partnership to procure and distribute vaccines in low-income countries, by 32 per cent.
“This is a big step up from 15 years ago, but it’s still a tiny share of China’s economy,” said Ian Mitchell, co-author of the report, noting China’s funding decisions had been quite selective. “It hasn’t supported much of the UN voluntarily. It hasn’t supported the verticals virtually at all, and it’s continued its bilateral efforts, but at a smaller scale”.
Co-author Beata Cichocka said China has made some large contributions to the World Health Organization while the US withdrew from the body, but Beijing was not filling all the gaps left by Washington and other Western powers, many of which have cut development outlays.
A Selective Approach to Multilateral Funding
The report’s findings reveal a nuanced picture of China’s engagement with the multilateral system. Only 11 per cent of Beijing’s contributions to UN entities were voluntary — a figure Mitchell called a telling sign of China’s strategic emphasis — compared with over 70 per cent of US contributions being voluntary.
China also boosted funding for zero- and low-interest multilateral bank lending programmes by 92 per cent in the last five years, the study found. The report, released ahead of the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok next week, showed China was now the fifth-largest donor to the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, the International Development Association (IDA), following a US$1.5 billion pledge during the last replenishment.
China began contributing to the IDA in 2007 and has since become the fifth-largest donor, despite having ceased borrowing from the fund in 2000 after graduating from eligibility for concessional loans. The World Bank is now planning to gradually stop lending to China by 2031, capping total loans at US$2 billion by that date, reflecting China’s transformation from a major borrower to a significant donor.
Voting Power Falls Short of Economic Weight
China has long pushed for a bigger role at the World Bank and IMF to better reflect its size and contributions. China’s share of the World Bank of around 6 per cent is less than half what the fund’s own economic formula suggests, while the US retains veto power with its shareholding of around 16 per cent.
As of September 2024, China held 6.40 per cent of IMF quota shares, ranking third behind the United States (17.43 per cent) and Japan (6.47 per cent), with voting power of 6.08 per cent. At the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), China’s shareholding and voting power stood at 6.23 per cent and 5.91 per cent respectively, also ranking third. Its voting power at the IDA is 2.54 per cent.
US and other Western officials have put the brakes on changes to the shareholder structures of the IMF and World Bank that would give China a larger voting power, arguing there is no consensus on realignments and China lacks transparency.
The BRICS bloc of emerging economies has repeatedly called for urgent reform of the Bretton Woods institutions. In a joint statement in September 2026, BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors said “the voice and representation of developing countries must reflect their relative position in the global economy,” urging international financial institutions to become more representative, transparent, accountable, and effective. Despite previous reforms, developing economies still hold less than half of the IMF’s capital.
Chinese Representation in International Institutions
Chinese nationals hold five senior management jobs at the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, a number that has held steady since 2021. But Beijing has lost top jobs at several UN institutions since 2020, including the WHO and the International Telecommunication Union, the study found.
The People’s Bank of China has called for reforms to reflect changing global economic realities. PBoC Governor Pan Gongsheng said in June 2025 that the quota and voting power of major international financial organisations, including the IMF and World Bank, have long lacked substantive adjustment, with emerging markets and developing countries “significantly underrepresented relative to their actual position in the global economy”.
From Borrower to Donor: China’s Economic Transformation
China, close to being declared a high-income country, has sharply reduced its borrowing from development banks, with total borrowing down to US8 billion in 2021, the study found. Once the World Bank’s biggest borrower in 2017, it now ranks 18th, and the Bank recently announced that it will stop all lending to China after 2031. China’s outstanding loans from the World Bank fell from about US750 million in 2025.
The shift reflects China’s broader economic transformation and its evolving relationship with the multilateral system it once relied upon for development financing. While Beijing has dramatically increased its financial contributions to development institutions, its selective approach — prioritising development banks over voluntary UN funding and cutting support for vertical health funds — suggests a strategic emphasis on areas where it can exert influence over broader development programmes.
The study was released as global development institutions face mounting pressure from funding cuts by Western powers, with China’s role in the multilateral system under increasing scrutiny ahead of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.
