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China's Going Global Strategy and Belt and Road Initiative gained great attention among scholars. Moreover, it is believed that Chinese investments abroad cause serious social and environmental externalities. Hence, in this paper, we examine how China's foreign direct investments influence the carbon emissions of 35 Belt and Road Initiative countries from 2000 to 2019. To do so, we use a panel model that accounts for heterogeneity and country cross-section dependence. Our results show that while other countries' foreign direct investments have contributed to the deterioration of the environment in these countries, Chinese investments have not. This substantiates the hypothesis of the halo effect influence of China's foreign investments as opposed to other countries' investments which may seek a haven for its carbon emissions. These results highlight the importance of source and destination regulations of foreign direct investments in terms of their environmental impact and carbon emissions in the Belt and Road Initiative countries. It also provides a fresh finding on the efficacy of China's foreign investment management policies and regulations in producing the desired environmental outcome in hosting countries.

A primary goal of studying climate change adaptation is to identify the adaptation options that are used to improve crop productivity or reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Many of the adjustments in farm management that farmers adopt do not necessarily represent true adaptations to climate change, an issue often ignored in existing literature and resulting in a risk that policy makers are misled to think that adaptation is easier than it actually is, and thereby underestimate the challenge that climate change presents. The overall goal of this study is to identify whether farmers’ adoptions are enhancing food production and adapting to climate change. The identification uses a plot-level panel from a survey of 619 rural households in three provinces in China and county-level weather data. With the use of plot and county-by-year fixed effects as well as instrumental variable approaches, our estimates show that the autonomous adoptions are not effective in improving crop yields. This implies that farmers’ adoptions cannot be always considered adaptations to climate change. The paper provides a possible explanation for the results and concludes with policy implications.

As an arid and semiarid region in that is frequently hit by drought, Northwest China is ecologically vulnerable. Faced with drought and other extreme events, policy makers have given top priority to the formulation and implementation of adaptation policies. This paper investigates the roles of community assets, including community social capital and access to public services, in mitigating the impact of drought in Northwest China. Based on a micro-level dataset of individual households and villages from two provinces, we find a major effect of community assets on grain yields, after controlling for other influences. Our econometric analyses show that the severity of drought in the study areas significantly reduces grain yields. The negative impact of drought, however, can be significantly mitigated in villages with better community assets. Several policies, including enhancing investments in communities’ infrastructure and providing public services related to drought, are recommended to both improve local adaptive capacity to drought and reduce poverty in the drought-prone areas.