Search

• Part of UN sustainable development goal 9 is upgrading production capabilities. • Increasing economic complexity is a key driver for sustainable economic growth. • Sequential model selection used for robust generalised method of moments estimation. • Chinese FDI evidently shows a positive impact on host countries' economic complexity. • Global policy makers should deepen their relationships with the belt and road. Upgrading the production capabilities in all countries is a target of the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 9. Increasing economic complexity, that is, a country's ability to manufacture more sophisticated products and thus moving up the value chain, is a key driver for sustainable economic growth. This paper investigates whether Chinese Belt and Road investments have impacted the economic complexity of host countries — a topic not addressed in the literature to date, using a sequential generalised method of moments model selection approach. The research focuses on the countries whose economic complexities are below that of China. Our empirical results show significant positive effects of Chinese investments on such host countries' economic complexities. The inflows of Chinese investments have thus supported the upgrading of production capabilities in these countries. This is encouraging, especially for the Global South countries, to intensify their interactions with the Belt and Road initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belt and Road Initiative is a major Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Research on the risk prevention and control of China's financial investment in countries along the Belt and Road has become a very hot topic in the world. This research focuses on the risk evaluation methods and prevention and control countermeasures of China's foreign investment under the Belt and Road Initiative. First, based on the analysis of the existing studies on economic investment evaluation, an intuitionistic fuzzy multi-attribute evaluation method based on entropy method and G1 method is proposed. The essence of the proposed method is to combine the intuitionistic fuzzy set theory with subjective and objective evaluation methods, which improves the disadvantage of the original evaluation method taking too much subjective factors into consideration. This study applies the proposed method to the economic risk evaluation of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), constructs a 17-indicator economic risk system, and uses this method to rank the importance of the 17 indicators. The more important contribution is that this paper not only achieves improvements at the theoretical level and innovation at the practical level, but also condenses the research conclusions into three pieces of countermeasures and suggestions on China's investment in countries along the Belt and Road. This research can provide theoretical support for Chinese government to make financial investment decisions in countries along the Belt and Road, and can also help countries along the Belt and Road to actively integrate into the Belt and Road Initiative, and promote the high-quality social and economic development of the countries along the Belt and Road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the lodestar of Beijing's efforts to increase its global political and economic influence. This article interrogates BRI discourse, arguing that the normative adoption of BRI narratives as a means for making sense of connectivities between China and other places risks producing new forms of epistemic violence against subaltern populations. The empirical focus of this paper is on China‐Laos relations, and the epistemic positioning of highland ethnic minority groups in northern Laos. This context offers a valuable case study for examining BRI discourse due to: (a) the profound effects of Chinese investment in Laos; (b) the geostrategic importance of Laos as a BRI 'gateway' between China and Southeast Asia; (c) the deep histories of ethnic minority engagements across China and Laos; and (d) the limited extant research on both China‐Laos relations and the more localized effects of Chinese actors within the highland border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction of the United States-led Indo-Pacific (IPAC) and the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an exercise in power to reshape the geopolitics of Asia-Pacific. Under the IPAC metageography, China is potentially excluded while the US's security border is extended to the Indian Ocean. BRI, on the other hand, has been advanced as an alternative model of economic globalization and diplomacy that is characterized by open and fluid borders. In this paper, we draw on a geoeconomic lens using oil/gas and the solar energy trade to shed light on Asia-Pacific's changing metageography. Power is constituted through relational coupling and decoupling as China and the US are locked in geoeconomic competition that expands but also contracts imaginaries of the region. The findings suggest that neither China nor the US holds a relational advantage in all energy sectors; each country however leads in sub-sectors. China, BRI and Asian IPAC are all significant importers of US oil and gas while China's solar trade has accelerated regional integration that includes the US. The paper concludes that China's exclusion from IPAC is not consistent with the geoeconomic realities of energy trade. BRI on the other hand has staked its success as an anti-colonial space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international investment literature consistently indicates that enterprises, functioning as pivotal components of the economic system, engage in diversified outward foreign investment activities, thereby catalyzing the transition towards a greener and more sustainable economy and society. Based on the overseas investment data of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper adopts a comprehensive approach comprising the two-way fixed effects model, propensity score matching technique, and difference-in-differences set up to evaluate the impact of the enterprise's overseas investment quantity and decision-making of host countries on green development. The findings explore that an increase in outward investment quantity facilitates the enterprise's green transition, which withstands robustness testing, including the decomposition of the green transition index, adjustments to the sample timeframe, and exclusion of corporate samples from top-tier cities. Such promoting effects are more pronounced among listed companies investing in low- and middle-income countries, as well as those located in provinces aligned with the Belt and Road Initiative in China. Further, an enterprise's overseas investment decision-making by the proposal of the BRI has exhibited a substantial and enduring enhancement of green development. This discovery underscores a pragmatic trajectory for the enterprise's green transformation, driven by proactive engagement in high-level openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources are distributed in the form of virtual water through international trade, which influences the water supply and consumption of each country. Therefore, it is of significance to study the driving factors of grain virtual water trade to alleviate water stress and guarantee food security. In this paper, the virtual water volume of grain crops traded between China and countries along the Belt and Road (B&R) from 2000 to 2019 was calculated, and a gravity model using panel data was applied to explore the effect of natural and socioeconomic factors on virtual water trade. The virtual water export from B&R countries to China obviously increased in the twenty years and the contributions of various crops to virtual water were more balanced. The regression results indicate that GDP and exchange rate were positively correlated with virtual water inflow, while per capital water resources, arable land, geographic distance, and population were negative factors that hindered virtual water import. The most powerful driving force for grain virtual water trade is water endowment. GDP is an important driver on importing virtual water for countries without water shortage, and a large number of local water resources will not obviously inhibit the driving force of economic strength. By comparing the contribution of factors to virtual water in the past ten years, it can be found that the contribution rate of distance decreased due to the development of transportation industry which reduced the transportation cost of exporting products. The contribution rate of GDP and exchange rate increased, because economic globalization has promoted the effect of economic factors on grain trade. Therefore, the trade structure of agricultural products should be modified based on the characteristics of virtual water flow. For countries without high economic level but water shortage, export crops with high water consumption be reasonably controlled. [Display omitted] • A gravity model was applied to explore the effect of natural and socioeconomic factors on virtual water trade. • The most powerful driving force is water endowment, which were negative factor that hindered virtual water inflow. • Economic strength is an important driver on importing virtual water for countries without water shortage. • The contribution rate of distance decreased due to the development of transportation industry and economic globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Eco-efficiency is evaluated from manufacturing and environmental protection stage. • Eco-efficiencies of two stages in most China's provinces are at a low level. • There are differences in two-stage eco-efficiency among China's provinces. • The effects of "Belt and Road" on the eco-efficiency of two stages are opposite. This paper divides the industrial eco-economic system into manufacturing stage and environmental protection stage, uses the improved metabolic GM(1,1) model and TOPSIS-DEA cross-efficiency model to evaluate the two-stage eco-efficiency of China's provinces from 2005 to 2020. On this basis, regression discontinuity is utilized to analyze the heterogeneous impact of "Belt and Road" initiative (BRI) on the eco-efficiency of industrial eco-economic system and two stages. The results show that: the eco-efficiency of industrial eco-economic system (EIES) and the eco-efficiency of manufacturing stage (EMS) have been at a relatively high level, while the eco-efficiency of environmental protection stage (EEPS) is still at a low level so far. The EIES and EMS of the provinces in eastern region are higher than those of the central, western and northeastern regions, while the EEPS of the western region is higher than that of the other three regions. The impacts of BRI on EIES and EEPS are significantly positive, while the BRI has a negative effect on EMS. In addition, there is a significant positive relationship between economic development level and EIES, EMS, and EEPS, industrial structure can promote EIES and EMS, and technological innovation has a significant positive correlation with EMS, a significant negative correlation with EEPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing economic and population growth has put immense pressure on energy, water and land resources to satisfy national and supra-national demand. Through trade, a large proportion of such a demand is fulfilled. With trade as one of its key priorities, the China Belt and Road Initiative is a long-term transcontinental investment program. The initiative gained significant attention due to greater opportunities for economic development, large population and different levels of resource availability. The nexus approach has appeared as a new viewpoint in discussions on balancing the competing sectoral demands. However, following years of work, constraints exist in the scope and focus of studies. The newly developed multi-regional input–output (MRIO) models covering the world's economy and its use of resources permit a comprehensive analysis of resource usage by production and consumption at different levels, and bring more knowledge about resource nexus problems. Using the MRIO model, this work simultaneously tracks energy, water and land use flows and investigates the transnational resource nexus. A nexus strength indicator is proposed which depends on ternary diagrams to grade countries based on their combined resources' use and sectoral weighting. Equal sectoral weighting is assigned. The analysis presented a sectorally balanced nexus approach. Findings support existing work by recognizing energy, water and land as the robust transnational connections, from both production and consumption points of view. Resource nexus issues differ from country to country owing to inequalities in industrial set-up, preferences in economic policy and resource endowments. The paper outlines how key resource nexus problems can be identified and prioritized in view of alternative and often opposing interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zhang, F.-F. and Ji, M., 2019. Adjustment path of marine economic industrial structure in China's coastal provinces under the 'belt and road' initiative. In: Gong, D.; Zhu, H., and Liu, R. (eds.), Selected Topics in Coastal Research: Engineering, Industry, Economy, and Sustainable Development. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 94, pp. 593–596. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The implementation of the "Belt and Road" strategy is an important strategic support for building a new regional opening pattern. It has important strategic significance for cultivating new industries along the line and developing new space for the development of the marine economy. All relevant coastal cities should actively use the development strategy of this country in the new era and actively promote the upgrading and transformation of the marine economic structure. This paper firstly introduces the opportunities brought by the "One Belt and One Road" to the marine industry of China's coastal provinces, and analyzes the main problems existing in the development of marine economic industry in China's coastal provinces. Then, the North Bay is taken as an example to propose the marine industry selection and system construction. Finally, it expounds the path of the adjustment of the marine economic industrial structure of China's coastal provinces under the "Belt and Road Initiative"initiative. It is expected to promote the cooperation and exchange of higher-level marine economy among the countries and regions along the coastal cities of China and the Maritime Silk Road, and promote the development of marine economy in China's coastal cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]