When:  27 October 2021, 4:00-5:30pm Hong Kong time (GMT+8)

Speaker:  Angela Tritto, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Sponsor:  Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Research of China’s Belt and Road Initiative has not yet provided a systematic analysis of how much of its investments have been channelled through industrial parks, mostly because of the lack of data. This talk is about a research project that tries to address this gap by building a novel dataset of industrial parks in Southeast Asia. The dataset was merged with a project-level FDI database to examine how much of post-BRI Chinese investments are connected to old and new industrial parks. Results show that newly established parks under the BRI have attracted a considerable amount of manufacturing investments, providing partial evidence that the Chinese government is exporting a state-led model of industrial development that has been successful domestically. Yet, there are also a number of smaller parks that after being announced have not led to any FDI realization. The talk will conclude by providing possible future application of this database to the study of environmental and social impacts connected to these parks.