Suchergebnisse

Infrastructure is at the heart of China's presence in global development and is also central to larger debates about Chinese influence. This Element provides a comprehensive account of major, Chinese government-financed infrastructure projects in the Global South since 1949. Using new datasets, it demonstrates that Chinese global infrastructure is distinct in terms of its historical tenacity and massive contemporary scope. But this does not imply that contemporary Chinese global infrastructure or the Belt and Road Initiative should be studied in a vacuum. Historical and comparative perspectives show that contemporary projects often emerge based on similar political logics to those that shaped infrastructure investment in earlier periods of Chinese history and other international contexts. The Element then examines how infrastructure projects have created both purposeful and unintended sources of influence by serving as valuable but risky political capital for host country governments as well as the Chinese government.

Why do governments pursue flashy international development projects despite more basic material needs? I argue that economically questionable "prestige projects" can be politically useful for legitimacy-seeking governments of small states in the Global South. Prestige projects provide these governments with otherwise unavailable symbolic capital as well as a means for seeking international status. Using new data on China's global development finance since 1949, I document nearly 400 prestige projects and show they are concentrated in developing countries with small economies that increase their support for China's diplomatic interests. An illustrative case study of Costa Rica's national stadium shows how host countries use prestige projects to acquire national symbolic capital and pursue status. Evidence from a survey experiment in Papua New Guinea further demonstrates that prestige projects are uniquely associated with the national government and status-seeking motives. The findings contribute to research on the political economy of foreign aid, international development, status-seeking, and Chinese development finance.

The twenty-sixth of December 2012 marked an important date in Chinese military history—the fourth anniversary of China's furthest and most extensive naval operations to date, the ongoing antipiracy deployments in the Gulf of Aden. In the first-ever simultaneous three-fleet public display, China's North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet, and South Sea Fleet all held "open day activities." The guided-missile destroyers Qingdao, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen and guided-missile frigate Zhoushan, together with their associated helicopters and personnel, were visited by more than eight thousand people "from all sectors of the society" at the port cities after which they are named. ; https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-red-books/1009/thumbnail.jpg

According to popular accounts, China's international influence is increasing with its growing material capabilities. However, researchers repeatedly demonstrate gaps between China's power and its influence. Building on earlier research, we propose an inclusive approach to conceptualizing China's influence abroad. Our approach conditions China's net influence on three dimensions. First, intentionality distinguishes between intentional influence-seeking and influence that accrues unintentionally via influence externalities. Second, a systematic treatment of Chinese intermediaries–the diverse set of substate actors operating overseas–is needed in order to expand the study of Chinese influence beyond state-level behavior. Finally, domestic institutions in host countries are essential conduits for conditioning how the behavior of Chinese actors, as well as group and individual reactions within host countries, are aggregated up to the policy level. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Bilateral donors use foreign aid to pursue soft power. We test the effectiveness of aid in reaching this goal by leveraging a new dataset on the precise commitment, implementation, and completion dates of Chinese development projects. We use data from the Gallup World Poll for 126 countries over the 2006-2017 period and identify causal effects with (i) an event-study model that includes high-dimensional fixed effects, and (ii) instrumental-variables regressions that rely on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese government financing over time. Our results are nuanced and depend on whether we focus on subnational jurisdictions, countries, or groupings of countries.

China's development finance is sizable but reliable information is scarce. To address critical information gaps, we introduce a new open source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance to Africa from 2000-2011. Our initial data collection efforts found that China's official finance commitments amount to approximately US$ 73 billion over the 2000-2011 period. We provide details on 1,511 non-investment projects to 50 African countries. We use this database to extend previous research on the aid-conflict nexus. Our results show that sudden withdrawals of "traditional" aid are only more likely to induce conflict in the absence of sufficient alternative funding from China. More broadly, these findings highlight the importance of gathering better data on the development activities of China and other non-traditional donors to better understand the link between foreign aid and conflict.

Bilateral donors use foreign aid to pursue soft power. We test the effectiveness of aid in reaching this goal by leveraging a new dataset on the precise commitment, implementation, and completion dates of Chinese development projects. We use data from the Gallup World Poll for 126 countries over the 2006–2017 period and identify causal effects with (i) an event-study model that includes high-dimensional fixed effects, and (ii) instrumental-variables regressions that rely on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese government financing over time. Our results are nuanced and depend on whether we focus on subnational jurisdictions, countries, or groupings of countries. On average, we estimate that the completion of one additional development project in a recipient country increases public support for the Chinese government by more than 3 percentage points in the short run and 0.2 percentage points in the longer run.