How Chinese Infrastructure Development Finance Affects Regime Ruling Parties

China has recently joined the upper ranks of the world's foreign aid donor class, with much of its aid taking the form of large, capital-intensive infrastructure projects like power plants, highways, hospitals, and schools. This paper explores the theory that foreign development aid in the form of large infrastructure projects can incentivize an authoritarian regime to build out political party machinery for capturing the rewards of the project. Unlike natural resource windfalls or cash aid, local party officials hoping to leverage infrastructure development aid will need the capacity to hand out jobs as patronage, to direct contracts toward party loyalists, and to carefully manage project externalities to keep local voters happy. To test this mechanism, I conducted a quantitative analysis using China's infrastructure development aid, V-Dem's political party capacity rankings, and regime party vote share changes. While the results are inconclusive, the thesis suggests avenues for future testing and research.