China is striving to expand its footprint in Central Asia, hoping to take advantage of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the broader cuts in American foreign assistance.

To date, China’s outreach in Central Asia has been largely limited to grand infrastructure projects undertaken within the framework of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But now, China is going small, launching limited programmes at the grass-roots level in cooperation with international organisations.

The first such initiative debuted on May 16, namely a joint project between China’s International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme to provide school meals to over 100,000 students in southern Kyrgyzstan. A WFP statement characterised the project as CIDCA’s “first multilateral initiative” in Central Asia under the auspices of the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund.

“WFP is grateful for this new contribution from the Government of China,” the statement quoted Kojiro Nakai, the WFP representative and country director, as saying during a launch event at a primary school in the southern Kyrgyz capital Osh. “This support will help address the serious micronutrient deficiencies affecting primary school children.”

By the end of the year, China is slated to deliver roughly 1,700 tonnes of fortified wheat flour, vegetable oil, rice and lentils to 300 schools in three southern Kyrgyz provinces, Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken.

The Kyrgyz initiative is one of what CIDCA characterises as “small and beautiful” (S&B) projects that Beijing hopes will foster goodwill among residents of the Global South. A recent CIDCA report casts S&B as a second phase of BRI, designed to “demonstrate the humanistic care and kindness of China’s foreign aid and international development cooperation.”

The document states that China will “scale up” S&B initiatives in the coming months and coordinate them with ongoing BRI-related infrastructure development “to help recipient countries consolidate the foundation of development while effectively solving livelihood problems.”

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.