AidData Chinese Financing For Transition Minerals

# Table of Contents: AidData's Chinese Financing for Transition Minerals Dataset (CFTM), Version 1.0

Dataset & Documentation

Released January 29, 2025

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Dataset Description

CFTM 1.0 captures China’s official sector grant and loan commitments between 2000 and 2021 for projects supporting upstream mining or midstream processing activities related to five focus transition minerals: Copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, and rare earth elements. The dataset is the result of systematically searching for Chinese official sector financial commitments in 165 LICs and MICs (based off of AidData's Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset 3.0) and uncovers grant and loan records in 19 developing countries related to the focus transition minerals. It also provides details on the timing of project implementation over a 25-year period (2000-2024). The dataset features 4 different views to better enable analysis of the data. Each data view is described below.

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Financial Contribution Level Data View

This data view is organized by financial contribution. Each row is assigned a unique AidData Record ID and captures one financial contribution from a single Chinese state-owned creditor or donor. Each creditor’s contribution to a loan commitment is captured in a separate row, even if it was part of a larger syndicated loan commitment (“loan event”). This data view is consistent with the way in which the 3.0 version of AidData's Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset (GCDF 3.0) is organized, although it includes several new variables and fields.

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Loan Event Level Data View

This data view is organized by “loan event.” Each row is assigned a unique Loan Event ID and captures all creditors that participated in a single loan agreement—including Chinese state-owned creditors, Chinese private sector creditors, and non-Chinese creditors—and the overall size of their (syndicated) loan commitment. To ensure comprehensive coverage across the entire CFTM 1.0 dataset, the “loan event level” data view includes one grant record and two debt rescheduling records in addition to all the loan records. The loan event IDs for the grant and debt rescheduling records include a “G” or “DR” at the end of the ID, respectively. The “Flow Type” field assigns records to “Loan,” “Grant,” and “Debt Rescheduling” categories to enable users to filter the data according to their analytic needs.

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Organization Role Data View

This data view provides a catalog of all organizations—including financiers, co-financiers, recipients, and implementers—involved in transition mineral projects supported by Chinese official financial commitments. It is particularly useful for applications that involve social network analysis of the CFTM 1.0 dataset. Each row records the identity of the involved organization, the corresponding loan event (where applicable), and the nature of the role that the organization played in the loan event or the project/activity supported by the loan event (where applicable). If an organization played more than one role in a given loan event, then there are multiple rows with one organizational role per row. In cases where the organization provided a financial commitment, the value of the transaction is recorded. This data includes Chinese official sector financiers and the Chinese private sector or non-Chinese creditors involved in syndicated lending arrangements alongside the Chinese official sector financiers.

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Organization Ownership Data View

This data view identifies the fractional ownership (equity) stakes that organizations hold in transition mineral operations supported by official sector financial commitments from China. Each row captures a shareholder of the project company operating at each mining or processing site and their corresponding ownership (equity) stake in percentage terms, with a minimum threshold of a 1% ownership stake applied. Whenever the recorded financial flow is not allocable to a specific mining or processing site, then this data view represents the ownership of the mining/processing company that received the financial commitment or the mining/processing company in which an ownership stake was acquired. In cases where Chinese official finance was extended to a project company operating a specific mining or processing site, this data view represents the equity owners of the main borrowing entity.

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License

This tab contains information about the open data license used for this dataset release.

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Citation:

AidData's Chinese Financing for Transition Minerals, Version 1.0: Walsh, K., Zhang, S., Malik, A. A., Escobar, B., and Zimmerman, J. 2025. Tracking China’s Transition Mineral Financing: Methodology and Approach, Version 1.0. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary.

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Acknowledgements:

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

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Overview

The original dataset produced by AidData is licensed using the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By).

Any use of the dataset and its content must include appropriate attribution to AidData.

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Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) Summary

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Disclaimer

This is not a license. It is simply a handy reference for understanding the ODC-BY 1.0 — it is a human-readable expression of some of its key terms. This document has no legal value, and its contents do not appear in the actual license. Read the full ODC-BY 1.0 license text for the exact terms that apply.