Private Data, Not Private Firms: The Real Issues in Chinese Investment
China’s investment around the world in 2017 was dominated by talk of restrictions applied by the central government and host governments, such as the United States. The obvious implication, supported by misleading official statistics, was that China’s global spending had plunged. This is wrong. The best available evidence indicates Chinese investment overseas climbed modestly in 2017, after a path-breaking 2016.
The China Global Investment Tracker (CGIT) from the American Enterprise Institute is the only fully public record of China’s outbound investment and construction.1 Rather than merely asserting totals, the CGIT lists all 2,700 transactions. The CGIT shows investment rising almost 9 percent in 2017. This heavily depended on the $43 billion acquisition of Swiss agro-tech giant Syngenta, without which investment would have dropped more than 16 percent. For perspective, the 2017 total without Syngenta would still be the second-highest on record.
Key Points
- The main development in 2017 for China’s investment around the world was the curbing of private Chinese investment in the US and the expansion of state-owned enterprises’ investment in Europe. There were signs late in the year that Beijing could allow more private spending in 2018.
- The United States, at least, may not be interested. American skepticism grew first due to a wave of attempted Chinese technology acquisitions and most recently with the possibility of Americans’ personal data being held by Chinese companies. Formal US restrictions are pending.
- The Belt and Road Initiative consists primarily of Chinese construction projects rather than investment. These continue to be substantial, but there was no sign of intensified activity in 2017, and the extreme dollar figures some associate with Belt and Road are currently unreasonable.
Πηγή: aei.org
