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Based on 1692 outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) events of 735 A-share listed companies in China's manufacturing industry from 2010 to 2019, this paper empirically examines the effect of investment motivation and the impact of institutional differences between China and the host country on the choice of OFDI entry mode;the paper also investigates the moderating effect of the "Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI) on Chinese manufacturing enterprises (CMEs) through use of the logit model. The empirical results show that, with greater institutional differences, CMEs become more inclined to choose cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Furthermore, a positive moderating effect of resource-seeking motivation on the choice of M&A OFDI by CMEs is observed. The signing of the "Belt and Road” cooperation document positively moderates institutional differences in promoting CMEs—especially state-owned CMEs—to choose the M&A mode. The "Belt and Road” Initiative provides an efficient supply system for OFDI by CMEs. This study enriches and extends existing institutional theories and provides suggestions for the promotion of the geopolitical pattern and international cooperation regarding the "Belt and Road” Initiative.
ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21(st) Century Maritime Silk Road, is a strategy of China's entry into international markets through the building of land and sea trade corridors with the necessary infrastructure. According to the Chinese government's statements, any State and any international organization can join the project that creates an inclusive cooperation platform. The aim of this article is to analyze the implementation of BRI in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as well as to identify changes that occur in this process under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary sources are statistical data, government documents, papers of international organizations and forums, think tank reports, speeches by officials, media publications, etc. In the course of the study, the following results are obtained: recent scientific works on the topic are systematized, the issues considered in them are highlighted;the main documents related to the BRI and China-L.. cooperation are listed and briefly characterized;the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of BRI in the region is identified. The author comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the BRI is a kind of rebranding of China's policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other hand, this initiative strengthens China's presence in the region. It has become especially noticeable in the COVID-19 pandemic context. In addition, there is a strategic expansion of the project itself and its goals, which may lead to a significant increase in tension between China and the USA.
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PurposeThis study aims to examine how participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects province-level regional economic resilience. In the context of dual circulation - the new development paradigm proposed by the Chinese Government - participating in the BRI is an important means of connecting both international and domestic circulations and achieving high economic resilience. The complex causal relationship between participation in the BRI and province-level regional economic resilience is investigated. Design/methodology/approachBased on the complex system view, this study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the impact on regional economic resilience when provinces participate in the BRI through unimpeded trade, infrastructure connectivity, financial integration and people-to-people bonds under the two conditions of attention allocation and buffering capacity. Qualitative textual analysis is applied to analyse provincial work reports, and relevant statistical data are used to measure the economic resilience from 2013 to 2020. FindingsThe authors identified three condition configurations that lead to a high regional economic resilience at province-level and one condition configuration that lead to no high-level regional economic resilience. Research limitations/implicationsIn-depth analyses of qualitative materials should be conducted to explain the systematic relationships among the conditions. Originality/valueThis research is of practical significance to the development of the theoretical framework and practices of the BRI in the context of dual circulation.
ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is considered one of the most important public goods that China has contributed to the world in the twenty-first century, attracting the attention and participation of countries around the world. Latin American and Caribbean countries (LAC) are important partners for the BRI. In recent years, the relationship between China and LAC has been heating up, and cooperation in various fields has fully developed, providing a guarantee for the mutually beneficial development of China and LAC. The BRI has become a development opportunity that Latin America's political, business, academic, and nongovernmental communities are focused on. In 2020, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) ravaged the world, causing serious losses, economic stagnation, and social problems in many countries. On September 8, 2020, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in LAC countries was close to 7.87 million, of which Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, had more than 4.19 million confirmed cases. Due to the economic and social turmoil caused by the pandemic, the LAC economy declined by 7.9% in 2020 according to a new report from World Bank, making it a far deeper recession than the 2008–2009 global financial crisis or the Latin America debt crisis in the 1980s, erasing the growth achieved in the prior 10 years. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) pointed out that international trade continues to shrink, and LAC exports are expected to drop by 23%, which greatly hinders normal economic cooperation between China and Latin American countries. Under such circumstances, there needs to be a new vision of the BRI and China-LAC cooperation. This chapter analyzes the achievements of BRI cooperation between LAC and China, the LAC economic and social stagnation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the transformation of the "Belt and Road” joint construction between China and LAC in the post-pandemic era. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Spurred by the expansive shared prosperity of its Belt and Road Initiative, China was winning the economic component of its Great Power Competition with the United States in Africa. Then Covid-19 spread to Africa in February 2020. By spring Africa's honeymoon with China was over. China's Covid-19 related discrimination against Africa as well as disruption in both the supply chain and the Belt and Road Initiative weakened bilateral ties. While nobody expects China to lose its place as Africa's biggest bilateral lending and trading partner, Sino-African ties are strained. Not surprisingly, Africa turned inward and focused on its fight against the invisible Covid-19 enemy. But Africa soon found itself in a new tradeoff between battling Covid-19 and violent extremism. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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A swiftly changing geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape in Central Asia-Southeast Asia (CASA) resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the modern Great Power Competition (GPC)-calls for a timely shift in U.S. foreign diplomacy to "soft power” facilitation and cooperation in this fragile region. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that isolationism and/or the over-reliance on militaristic might are ineffective strategies for maintaining long-term U.S. national interests. As China rapidly expands its "soft power” influence in the Central Region through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the U.S. must enact similar strategic undertakings to remain competitive. To that end, the New Silk Road Initiative (NSRI) is the United States' best option to compete and/or cooperate with China's BRI. Strategic implementation of the NSRI is critical, not only for gaining traction in the modern GPC, but ultimately for expediting a successful recovery from the pandemic, through increased regional trade and economic development. The NSRI can facilitate the commercialization of Afghanistan's vast wealth of natural resources, especially its rare earth and critical minerals, ensuring continued U.S. strategic influence in the CASA region. The NSRI can also be instrumental in affording new opportunities for interstate cooperation within the scientific and technological communities during this crucial time of global recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted not only our global interconnectedness and interdependence, but also the prospect of great power cooperation in the service of global healing. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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This book systematically assesses the risk of 21 major infectious diseases threatening BRI countries. It consists of 14 chapters. Chapter 1 is an overview. Chapter 2 introduces the history of health cooperation between China and other BRI countries. Chapters 3-14 introduce the prevalence of major infectious diseases threatening BRI countries such as cholera, vaccine preventable diseases (polio, measles, meningitis, Japanese encephalitis, diphtheria, hepatitis A), tuberculosis, influenza, and insect-borne diseases (Dengue fever, Zika virus disease, yellow fever, Chikungunya, Rift Valley fever), plague, malaria, Ebola virus disease, MERS, schistosomiasis, COVID-19 and AIDS, and risk factors, principles and cases of their prevention and control. It is a useful reference book in the research of infectious disease control and prevention, and provides historical experience and lessons learned. It also provides decision support for international cooperation among BRI countries in the field of epidemic prevention and control in the future. © People's Medical Publishing House, PR of China 2021, corrected publication 2021.
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To what extent do national strategic interests influence countries' distribution of health assistance during a global health crisis? We examine China's global COVID-19 vaccine allocation, focusing on the relationship between its vaccine prioritization and its geopolitical expansion through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We claim China uses its vaccine diplomacy as a comprehensive tool to promote its grand strategy and expand its global leadership and influence. Employing a newly available dataset on Chinese COVID-19 vaccine deliveries for a cross-section of 108 BRI member countries, our study shows that countries with foreign direct investment flows into BRI projects have received more vaccines from China. Our findings confirm that donor strategic concerns affect bilateral foreign assistance. Our results remain robust to several robustness checks, including endogeneity concerns. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of V.K. Aggarwal.
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This study is aimed to propose a quantitatively supported framework regarding different types of risks involved in BRI and strategic solutions to neutralize the risks. The conceptual model and related propositions are advanced, based on bibliometric and science mapping analysis of 367 articles published over 6 years about risk, success, failure and dissent about the projects, and strategies to mitigate these risks. The descriptive statistics and science mapping approaches using co-citation analysis were performed with VOSviewer software. A co-citation analysis, coupled with content analysis of most co-cited articles, uncovered four underlying research streams, including "Infrastructural expansion and political & economical risks,” "Investment choice through impact assessment and cultural risks,” "Environmental risks,” and "Real outcomes of BRI projects and viewpoint of host countries.” Among the four strategies identified, developing trust in the Chinese system can be created through National Branding by Chinese MNEs to mitigate the geo-political risks. Second, Guanxi neutralizes the reputation risks and cultural friction in collaborative projects and positively affects BRI project implementation. Third, the localization of management and processes can also help in offsetting the environmental risks in post COVID scenario. Lastly, increasing multilateral funding for sustainable infrastructure can be used to boost financial capacity building and mitigate financial risk to a certain extent. The present study has been a novel attempt to relate current research themes to emerging areas under BRI. This study is one of its kind which focuses on reshaping the views of practitioners, researchers, and policymakers on the multifaceted areas and themes in the BRI research field, to examine the risks and a roadmap for future research. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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China has been contributing to new approaches to global governance. The Health Silk Road (HSR), a significant component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was proposed by China in 2016. This paper claims that HSR is a new institution introduced alongside the existing WHO-led multilateral health system, and its relationship with the existing system can be described as layering. Having explored the new development of HSR during COVID-19, this paper further argues that while HSR has its unique strength in making contributions to global health governance and economic recovery, it faces a prominent issue of securitisation in the context of China-U.S. strategic competition, suspicion of the quality of medical products and sectoral fragmentation.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Pandemics , Humans , China/epidemiology , Global HealthABSTRACT
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, its impacts have been envisaged in multi-dimensional ways, including global supply chains, international logistics, and transportation. Owing to a series of virus variants since 2020, several Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects have been halted along the Belt and Road (B&R), and their implementation progress has been affected. In addition, China, which initiated the BRI in 2013, has been facing challenges which are caused by its economic, socio-demographic, and international political structural changes. Moreover, growing conflicts and tensions in international trade and politics, such as the war between Russia and Ukraine, China-US trade conflicts, foreign companies' reshoring the production lines from China, and diplomatic disputes between China and Australia, have been interwoven with the impacts of COVID-19 on the supply chains, international trade, and transportation in the world. Having considered the above, this study explores a new research-driven approach to reignite the BRI momentum in the transitional period towards the post-COVID-19 era from a Chinese economic perspective. In doing so, this paper proposes nine research agendas, such as the optimization network of transportation and logistics distribution centers (LDCs) along the B&R, priority development and performance of LDCs, greening the B&R with green shipping corridors, revisiting port devolution continuum, humanitarian logistics in association with COVID-19, security and risk analysis of China's energy supply chains, and export of the 6th Generation Ports (6GP) model with smart ports to major container ports along the port supply chains. Each research agenda is addressed with its motivation, significance, and applicable and representative methods.
ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21(st) Century Maritime Silk Road, is a strategy of China's entry into international markets through the building of land and sea trade corridors with the necessary infrastructure. According to the Chinese government's statements, any State and any international organization can join the project that creates an inclusive cooperation platform. The aim of this article is to analyze the implementation of BRI in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as well as to identify changes that occur in this process under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary sources are statistical data, government documents, papers of international organizations and forums, think tank reports, speeches by officials, media publications, etc. In the course of the study, the following results are obtained: recent scientific works on the topic are systematized, the issues considered in them are highlighted;the main documents related to the BRI and China-L.. cooperation are listed and briefly characterized;the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of BRI in the region is identified. The author comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the BRI is a kind of rebranding of China's policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other hand, this initiative strengthens China's presence in the region. It has become especially noticeable in the COVID-19 pandemic context. In addition, there is a strategic expansion of the project itself and its goals, which may lead to a significant increase in tension between China and the USA.
ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is a strategy of China's entry into international markets through the building of land and sea trade corridors with the necessary infrastructure. According to the Chinese government's statements, any State and any international organization can join the project that creates an inclusive cooperation platform. The aim of this article is to analyze the implementation of BRI in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as well as to identify changes that occur in this process under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary sources are statistical data, government documents, papers of international organizations and forums, think tank reports, speeches by officials, media publications, etc. In the course of the study, the following results are obtained: recent scientific works on the topic are systematized, the issues considered in them are highlighted;the main documents related to the BRI and China-LАС cooperation are listed and briefly characterized;the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of BRI in the region is identified. The author comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the BRI is a kind of rebranding of China's policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other hand, this initiative strengthens China's presence in the region. It has become especially noticeable in the COVID-19 pandemic context. In addition, there is a strategic expansion of the project itself and its goals, which may lead to a significant increase in tension between China and the USA. © 2022, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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University mottos have been demonstrated to convey educational philosophies, but few studies have investigated the educational philosophies reflected by university mottos from countries along the "One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) route, with applying the analytical approaches like text mining and natural language processing (NLP). This present investigation constructed a database of university mottos from 1,535 universities in 61 countries along the OBOR route and applied NLP technology to explore the similarities and differences of educational philosophies among the universities along the OBOR route. Methods of NLP used in this article included text mining, cluster analysis, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model. The social network analysis (SNA) model was used to further analyze the interconnection and exchange of educational philosophies expressed through university mottos. Based on the five identified topic categories, we concluded that countries along the OBOR route have the same basic educational philosophy for higher education but have different emphases due to cultural differences, such as the different emphases on virtue education, collectivism, and individualism. Education for sustainability is another focus of higher education philosophy reflected by the topic categories of university mottos, which is consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, for example, quality education. In addition to demonstrating the BRI impact on educational philosophies of countries along the OBOR route, this present investigation could also contribute to the growing body of knowledge about international cooperation and communication of higher education under the framework of BRI, for a globalized, shared and sustainable education in the post-COVID era. © The Author(s) 2022.
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This commentary brings diverse and dispersed urban geography analyzes of global China into conversation. I show that findings from the pre-COVID-19 research presented in the four articles that comprise the special issue on Urbanizing Dynamics of Global China beg comparative questions of each other, both retrospective and future-facing. My hope is that the collection of articles will thus provide grounds for new comparative, and perhaps collaborative, research across urban Chinas that have previously been examined separately.
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Driven by globalization, the COVID-19 outbreak has severely impacted global transport and logistics systems. To better cope with this globalization crisis, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-based on the concept of cooperation-is more important than ever in the post-pandemic era. Taking the BRI as the background, we design an intermodal hub-and-spoke network to provide reference for governments along BRI routes to improve their cross-border transportation system and promote economic recovery. In the context of the BRI, local governments at different nodes have incentives to subsidize hub construction and/or rail transportation to boost economic development. We consider co-opetition behavior among different levels of government caused by subsidies in this intermodal hub location problem, which we call the intermodal hub location problem based on government subsidies. We establish a two-stage mixed-integer programming model. In the first stage, local governments provide subsidies, then the central government decides the number and location of hubs. In the second stage, freight carriers choose the optimal route to transport the goods. To solve the model, we design an optimization method combining a population-based algorithm using contest theory. The results show that rail subsidies are positively correlated with construction subsidies but are not necessarily related to the choice of hubs. Compared with monomodal transportation, intermodal transportation can reduce costs more effectively when there are not too many hubs and the cost of different modes of transportation varies greatly. The influences of local government competition and hub construction investment on network design and government subsidies are further examined.
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China and Italy are both countries with a strong culture and long history, that share positive bilateral relations. In 2019, Italy was the first EU country to sign a MoU with China on collaboration within the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing's major diplomatic outreach system. However, more than two years later, most agreements have not materialized yet. Is it due to political implications or economic interests? It is arguable that one of the main reasons for this slow development is connected to communication barriers and differences in identities and perceptions, and therefore to the cultural relations between the two countries. By applying the Constructivist theories, it is possible to demonstrate how the lack in mutual understanding can hinder deeper cooperation between people and countries. This leads to the main questions addressed in this paper: what are the obstacles to a deeper Italy-China partnership, how to overcome them and improve the overall relations? This paper is the first part of a bigger thesis that will be completed in 2023. Rome and Beijing had planned a "China-Italy 2020 Year of Culture and Tourism", to enhance the people-to-people exchanges, tourism and cultural cooperation. However, due to the Coronavirus pandemics the events have been postponed to 2022. This paper analyses the Italian public opinion on China during 2020, when instead of learning about the other culture, people were forced to practice social distancing. It will be necessary to compare the 2020 public opinion polls with surveys conducted after the 2022 Year of Culture and Tourism. If the results will show improvement in the Italian public opinion on China and increased interstate cooperation, it will be possible to demonstrate the idea that the collaboration between the two countries can improve thanks to further cultural exchanges and mutual understanding.
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Globalization has run into two intersected momentous shifts over the past decade. One is an accelerating retreat in the Western-led economic globalization. The other is the continued surge of China as a leader of alternative economic globalization, via the Belt and Road Initiative. These two powerful trends are complicated by COVID-19 and the Ukraine war with their disruptions of global geopolitics, plus a potential technological decoupling between China and the United States as great-power rivals. This unprecedented combination of challenges and crises occasions a fresh analysis of the roles of the West versus China in shaping economic globalization past and present. Against the state-centric approach to globalization, I develop a historically-informed framework to couple spatial and sectoral analyses of the trajectories of economic globalization shaped by the West and China. I first examine the cross-regional dimensions of economic globalization across Eurasia featuring China's primary role in driving the China-Europe Freight Train. I then explore China's exceptional strength in delivering overseas infrastructure projects, as embodied by the China-Laos Railway, relative to the West's sectoral advantages bearing on economic globalization. Lastly, I summarily discuss the past and present roles of the West versus China in producing new divergence in future economic globalization.
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Since "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) of 2014, the number of foreigners in China has increased rapidly and China has become an importing country for immigrants, a change ongoing since the beginning of the 21st century. To respond to the rapidly increasing number of foreigners in China, the government frequently revised the immigration policies and issued new regulations for foreigners. However, scholars understand very little about how the foreigners perceive their integration into Chinese society or decide to pursue long-term residency or lawful permanent resident status. While some pioneering studies touch on this, with samples from the coastal megacities, no empirical evidence has been collected from smaller, inner cities. Three new findings about the foreigners in Xi'an, a major city in western China, fill this literature gap. First, the level of subjective social integration is largely influenced by the local networks. Second, the level of objective social integration depends largely on local and hometown networks. Third, the intention to obtain long-term and permanent residency in China is more evident in those foreigners who come from countries covered by the BRI and who consider China to be a better place to live than their home country.