China's outward foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia: Analyzing the Chinese state's strategies and potential influence

Abstract

Through a comparative study of China's global and regional outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), this article seeks to understand the Chinese state's motives behind such investment, and how it leverages its OFDI to influence the regional economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The analysis reveals several findings. First, the status of ASEAN states in China's global OFDI project have changed in the last decade from destinations for infrastructure investment to essential manufacturing hubs. The launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) did, in part, allow for this shift, insofar as it diversified the financial channels that facilitate the region's infrastructure development, thereby enabling China to concentrate its OFDI on manufacturing and service linkages throughout the region. Second, whereas China originally directed the majority of its OFDI to low-income ASEAN countries, after 2013, it began to direct greater levels of OFDI to middle and high-income ASEAN countries. This shift did not necessarily grant China greater influence in those countries owing to the much more inward FDI from other developed economies, while China has continued to leverage its OFDI in low-income ASEAN countries to great effect. Third, China might enjoy greater influence in the infrastructure and manufacturing sectors in the region given its greater investment in these two sectors, as compared to that of other developed countries. China's influence in the regional service industry, meanwhile, continues to be less noteworthy, comparatively.