On May 8, 2019, our school had the honor to invite professor Hinrich Voss from the university of Leeds to our school to hold an academic lecture themed "China's investment evaluation in countries along the 'One Belt And One Road'". Teachers and students in total more than 50 people participated in the event, and received a good response.
Hinrich Voss holds a PhD in international business from the university of Leeds. He is currently professor of international business at the university of Leeds and associate editor of the journal transnational corporations. In 2017, his research on China's ofdi was awarded the 10-year achievement award by the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). In 2016, he was named by Luo et al. (2016) as one of the top ten scholars in the study of emerging market transnational corporations.
Based on 2005-2017 foreign direct investment of Chinese enterprises in the countries along the trend analysis, Voss says professor, Chinese enterprises' investment is to expand the market, improve efficiency and seek strategic assets, access to natural resources, institutional arbitrage, dispersive risk factors such as drive, more high economic freedom, low system from state, the top 10 countries combined attracted 89% of China's investment, the top five combined attracted 66%. The risk tolerance of Chinese transnational corporations is affected by controllable (endogenous) risks and uncontrollable (exogenous) risks.
Prof Voss used indicators of foreign dependence (FDIDI = Chinese FDI stock in X/Global FDI stock in X, updated every three years) to analyse the change in the degree of interdependence between China and One Belt And One Road countries between 2005 and 2017. Data show that the proportion of investment in "One Belt And One Road" countries in China's total outbound investment has more than doubled, from nearly zero to nearly 0.25%. In the "One Belt And One Road" countries, China's investment in total external investment increased by more than eight times, from nearly zero to nearly 10%. Professor Voss pointed out that although the economic ties between the "One Belt And One Road" countries and China have increased significantly, the growth is based on zero and is still at a low level. From the perspective of investment scale, the "One Belt And One Road" countries receiving the highest amount of outbound investment from China only received us $20 billion, while the average value of each country was us $400 million.
Prof Voss analyzed the attitudes of different countries towards the "One Belt And One Road" and found that the media paid more attention to such issues as "trade deficit", "debt trap", "land grab" and "corporate governance". Professor Voss's research found that eight countries, including Laos, tajikistan and Nepal, which are highly dependent on Chinese companies for investment, hold a positive attitude towards Chinese companies' investment. However, he also pointed out that this result may be related to their poor business environment, low media freedom and strong government control. Professor Voss believes that the legitimacy of projects invested by Chinese enterprises should come from the benefits of direct investment to the host country, namely, technology spillover effect and demonstration effect, but at the same time, Chinese enterprises may also crowd out the economy of the host country.
In general, professor Voss believes that "One Belt And One Road" has not significantly changed the investment pattern of China. Chinese enterprises do invest in countries along the "One Belt And One Road", but they are highly concentrated in a few countries and have not yet produced extensive economic links and win-win results. The investment behavior of Chinese enterprises is partly driven by market factors and partly influenced by national strategies. The influence of "One Belt And One Road" on Chinese enterprises is still marginal, and its legitimacy and performance need to be verified. For the host country economy, except for 8 highly dependent countries, the marginal impact on most countries is small.
