Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

Motivated by the Chinese government's foreign direct investment (FDI) promotion policies, this paper is attempting to examine the implications of these policies to the Belt and Road (B&R) regions under the unique institutional settings. By applying the software tool CiteSpace, which is developed for visual analyze of science mapping (Chen, 2017), this paper aims to investigate the dynamics of Chinese cross-border investment activities in B&R countries, taking the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as an example, and discuss the question whether & how these policies and activities could drive more Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) to exploit these emerging business opportunities in B&R regions, as well as investigate what is the trend of Chinese FDI in B&R.