This chapter examines the characteristics and trends of Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investments (OFDI) between 2000-2024. Using the Varieties of Institutional Systems (VIS) framework developed by Fainshmidt et al. (2018), the chapter unpacks how institutional arrangements such as the role of state, financial markets, human capital, social capital, and corporate governance shape firm behavior at home and abroad. This study addresses a theoretical and empirical gap by connecting the home country's institutional variety to internationalization patterns and strategies of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs). The findings in this chapter would help scholars, managers and policy makers to understand China's global investment.

We investigate how the firm's board structure (i.e., Chief Executive Officer duality or independence) and its asset scale at the microlevel, the industry's technological intensity at the mesolevel, and the government's initiatives at the macrolevel influence firms' digital innovation performance in the innovation ecosystem of the Chinese manufacturing industry. Drawing on a longitudinal study of 1098 firms sourced from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database, in this article, we utilize a coevolutionary multilevel model for the exploration. Our findings reveal that firms led by independent board members with large-scale assets and that have received government subsidies are more likely to achieve superior digital innovation performance. Furthermore, the impact of microlevel factors varies with technological intensity, with medium- and high-tech firms showing more significant innovation performance improvements. We suggest that firms maintain a board composition with a balanced mix of independents with objective oversight and nonindependents with strategic influence and allocate their resources to capitalize on emerging technological trends to perform better in innovation ecosystems. Firms should not solely depend on government support but align their resource basis and governance structures to leverage technology and incentives effectively. Policymakers should craft targeted initiatives depending on the innovation ecosystems' technological intensity and the firms' resource endowments.

The hoof prints along the Belt and Road are carriers of the harmony that flows out of diversity.

South Asia refers to the vast region lying between the middle and western Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.

West Asia and North Africa, linking the three continents and the two oceans, are rich in petroleum resources and highly dependent on exports of petroleum products.

This book deepens the understanding of economic development of each relevant economy to encourage participation of economies in regional connectivity

The Southeast Asia region is composed of 11 countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Timor-Leste.

Due to the ethnic, cultural, economic and political diversities of the countries along the Belt and Road, how much we understand these countries determines the depth and breadth of our cooperation with them.

There have been many recent fears of severe house-price decreases in some provinces in China causing a nationwide collapse of the housing market. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the linkage structure of China's housing market and its risk contagion routes. Given monthly data of provincial housing and stock-market capital returns from 2001M01 to 2019M12, on the basis of graph theory, this paper first explores the linkage structure of provincial housing markets. Relying on the linkage structure, this paper then simulates the effect of unexpected negative shocks from the stock market on the probabilities of a housing-market collapse based on the epidemic model. The results show that (i) consistently with practical evidence, the probability of housing-market collapse is relatively high in the southwest of China and (ii) reducing housing-market linkage, such as through a blocking mechanism, to prevent collapse is helpful.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) performance and impact in contexts beyond their own internal objectives. Design/methodology/approach Based on an “eclectic” paradigm and the range of motivations, the framework is designed around three layers of evaluation: “efficiency” as static optimisation, “growth and development” as the dynamics of change on a purely economic view; political/economic sphere in terms of the outcomes of “distribution”, and “sovereignty” on the more purely political concern of how MNEs may undermine countries’ policy independence. Findings MNE and national economies have to use current sources of competitiveness efficiently while addressing the necessity to reinforce and refocus them through time. Within these broad agendas, significant interactions and outcomes reflect a range of contingencies conditioned by both MNE objectives and hosts’ competitive status. Originality/value The paper concerns economics and MNE role in globalisation. The paper defines a framework of four generic evaluative issues of MNE performance, which subsume a wider range of important but more niche concerns.

Coal resources play an important role in socioeconomic development around the world. Yet the development driven by coal mining is accompanied by ecological damage, social instability, and economic vulnerability, which seriously hinder the sustainable development of coal mining cities. It is, thus, urgent to realize the sustainable development of coal mining cities, premised on comprehensive and scientific analysis of these cities’ vulnerability characteristics. In this study, based on the analysis of the social-economic-natural compound ecosystem (SENCE), we constructed a vulnerability evaluation indicator system (28 indicators) for coal mining cities. Took cities producing more than ten million ton of coal in China in 2015 as examples, the weight of every indicator was obtained using entropy weight method. In addition, cities were ranked and classified based on vulnerability characteristics of three subsystems. The reasons for subsystem vulnerability in different regions were analyzed. The results showed that industrial smoke and dust emissions, elevation, proportion of the area containing coal are the main reason for natural vulnerability. Unemployment rate of urban employees, and mining workers as a proportion of the secondary industry workforce are the main cause to social vulnerability. Self-sufficiency rate of local finance, and value of secondary industries as a proportion of GDP are the main indicators leading to economic vulnerability. Our findings suggest that preventing soil erosion, accelerating the resolution of historical problems, promoting green mining, and encouraging renewable energy should be adopted to reduce natural vulnerability; resettling the unemployed and adjusting employment structure are effective in enhancing the sustainability of social subsystems; changing industrial structure, encouraging self-employment, as well as implementing scientific and technological innovation should be considered to realize economic sustainability.

The development of metro systems has shortened the travel distances and density within cities, and promoted the transformation of urban transportation, which has had an impact on traffic energy consumption. Based on data from 81 cities in mainland China with a permanent population of more than one million from 2003 to 2016, this paper uses the difference in differences (DID) method to study the impact of urban metro systems on transportation energy consumption in China. The results show that after the opening of the city subway, per capita traffic energy consumption decreased, indicating that subways reduce energy consumption in urban areas; there exists a “U” relationship between metro operation intensity and per capita traffic energy consumption. The average level is far from the inflection point value, which indicates that an increase in metro operation intensity has the effect of improving traffic energy consumption. However, the marginal benefit of reducing urban traffic energy consumption is gradually decreasing. Further research has found that the metro system can reduce the distance travelled by cars by replacing the use of traditional automobile transportation, thus reducing transportation energy consumption.

House price is affected by households’ expectation of future house price trend and volatility, where the expected volatility of housing capital return, indicated by variance, is defined as the housing market risk. Theoretically, risk element cannot be directly inserted in the standard housing models because most of the models are built on the underlying assumption of certainty. Extending the life-cycle model to a two-asset expected utility case with uncertainty, we show house price is affected by housing market risk premium, which is a function of households’ risk-aversion coefficient, real housing wealth, and expected housing volatility. Empirical analysis relying on China’s 2001–2018 provincial housing panel data supports the theoretical innovation. Despite the empirical results show that the effect of housing market risk on house price is tiny, simulations suggest that the consideration of risk is quite helpful in analyzing and predicting the long-run house price equilibriums.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was introduced under the Chinese economy’s “New Normal”. The BRI was proposed as a strategic design in 2013, consolidated in 2014 and formally launched in 2015.