Norway appears to have a knack of aligning itself with some of the more progressive voices in international development – and long may it continue to do so

Some people believe the Chinese invented the yo-yo, and it appears to have influenced the way they operate at international meetings. The will it/won't it rumour mill surrounding China here in Busan has been in overdrive about whether Beijing will endorse an outcome document at the fourth high-level forum on aid effectiveness. It was inevitable, then, that I started my chat with Erik Solheim, Norway's development minister, with a question on the subject.

His opinion was surprising, but possibly one of the wisest summaries I have heard so far: "The process is more important than the document." While pieces of paper tend to be forgotten quite soon, the last-minute decision by the Chinese signals that they may be more likely to engage in country-level donor meetings, which they have often preferred not to attend up to now.

He appeared to agree with my view that it will require the OECD to pull back even more if the emerging powers are really to engage in this process, but this de facto step forward in terms of co-ordination and country ownership of donor support was what we should really be focusing on, he said.

As the international development agenda evolves at Busan, with aid gradually ceding ground to other financial flows and broader policy coherence, everyone wants to claim how far ahead of the curve they are. For most, such claims are exaggerated – they are still heavily invested in the old-fashioned aid agenda even if they use the latest flash words. But Norway genuinely has led on the kind of "beyond aid" issue that is now reaching the level of conventional wisdom at Busan.

I reminded Solheim of his country's leadership on the issue of illegitimate debt, which I remember from my time as a debt campaigner. "We are ahead of change," he said. "We wrote off all the illegitimate debt we were owed and tried to instigate changes at an international level, at the World Bank and UN … The lender should bear responsibility as well as the debtor when a loan goes bad" – something that may be applicable to countries closer to home in the current eurozone crisis.

Having led on the illegitimacy of debt, a fairly radical idea in many donor circles, the Norwegian government is now taking another large elephant and placing it firmly in the middle of the room. The problem of illicit capital flows has until now been the almost exclusive preserve of NGOs and academia. The IMF told me in a private meeting that it does not consider it an issue over which it has competence. The OECD, on the other hand, has taken a strong interest in the issue – but political support will always be a problem given the number of OECD-related tax havens.

So it is striking that Norway's one side event at Busan will be on this issue. Solheim recognises that this is one of many development issues that need to be solved at governmental level, not by an aid agency, so it is interesting that the Norwegian aid agency is part of the foreign ministry and not separate, as it is in the UK. Will that facilitate the move from being primarily concerned with aid to being more broadly concerned with development, which is what the vision being set out in Busan implies.

Norway's model is to pick a few global themes on which it has a "special competence" and expand them globally. Illicit capital flight emerges as a theme as it is linked to the resource and financial management expertise that Norway is recognised to have developed, given its vast oil reserves. In this it is somewhat like the south-south co-operation that is all the rage at Busan, more of an exchange of knowledge and expertise than a funding of specific largescale costs. Perhaps Norway's relatively small size enables it to play a more horizontal role in its development partnerships.

One other area being discussed here is the role of aid to middle-income countries. On this as well Norway takes a line that bucks the trend – but one that I more or less share. Even when seeking just to transfer knowledge, Solheim argues, having money behind it leads to better access. Brazil, which has been a middle-income country for decades, is the largest beneficiary of Norwegian aid, for work on forest conservation and management. Most poor people live in middle-income countries, the countries are vital for global goods, and there is no sign from the Norwegians that they want to end support to them any time soon.

It reminded of what a Tanzanian colleague told me some time ago, that harmonisation among donors was not necessarily a good thing if it meant that Norway (the country he singled out) ended up being more like other donors. And he was talking about Norwegian aid in the 1970s. Norway appears to have developed a knack of aligning itself with some of the more progressive voices in the international development landscape – and long may it continue.