China’s BRI and Industrial Parks in Southeast Asia. Investigating Patterns of FDI and their Potential Impacts through a Novel Database

Research on 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 research addressed 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 the BRI has led to the establishment of several new national-level industrial parks and that they have attracted a considerable amount of manufacturing investments, primarily related to mineral processing. This provides 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, which are mostly either private or local government initiatives. Our results also show evident patterns of geographical connectivity when examining investment flow between Chinese provinces and Southeast Asian countries. We conclude by providing possible future applications of this database to the study of environmental and social impacts connected to these parks, and to the study of geopolitical competition in this region.