China’s One Belt and One Road Initiative and Outward Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Europe

Abstract

For the last few years, the execution of the Belt and Road Initiative (hereinafter referred to as the BRI) and China’s outward foreign direct investment (hereinafter referred to as OFDI) in Europe have seen a significant upward trend. For our current paper, we collected empirical data pertaining to China’s OFDI and foreign trade (gathered from 21 European countries in the trade gravity market for the period 2003 to 2016) that yielded the following results: (a) China’s OFDI to Europe has significantly promoted international trade between China and European countries. On the other hand, OFDI has equally promoted China’s exports to European counties, while it has not encouraged China’s imports from European counties. (b) The Belt and Road Initiative has had a positive impact on China’s exports to European counties and has had a negative impact on China’s imports from European counties. (c) There have been both complementary trade impacts and substitution trade impacts when China has directly invested in European countries, but the complementary impact was much stronger than its substitution impact in the chosen sample period.