Research On Cultivated Land Resource Evaluation And Influencing Factors Of Investment In "One Belt And One Road"

As China's agriculture is increasingly geared into the world agriculture,outward foreign direct investment(“OFDI”)in agriculture has made rapid progress,especially the arable land investment in the "Belt and Road Initiatives”(“BRI”)has brought great opportunities for the investment cooperation between China and countries along the routes.Most BRI countries,as developing countries,are endowed with plentiful natural resources where agriculture acts as one of the most significant contributors to the social stability and national economy.However,for some BRI countries,their agricultural production pattern is still extensive with low science and technology level and relatively backward economic background,which is highly complementary to that of China.In such sense,China's cooperation with those countries in agriculture is mutually beneficial towards a win-win result and a profitable future.In the critical period of implementing the BRI,agriculture sector is confronted with problems including food security issues,resource shortages,and how to organically integrate the primary,secondary and tertiary industries,which are also what China and the BRI members urgently need to join hands to address.Under such circumstances,it is crucial to probe into China's foreign investment on arable land,as an integral component of the "going out" strategy of China's agriculture.It is also of paramount significance to study how the arable land resources,economic distance to China,and institutional quality of the BRI countries impact on China's foreign investment on arable land,through which the domestic research on China's OFDI on the arable land of the BRI countries is diversified,with a view to offering a reference for optimizing local enterprises' investment on the arable land of the BRI countries and their cooperation,making resource allocation more rational.Theoretically,this paper with an attempt to use OFDI theory and new economic geography theory,puts forward the theoretical hypothesis that the arable land resources,economic distance to China,and institutional quality of the BRI countrieswill impact on the location choice,scale and decision-making of China's investment on arable land,which expands the analysis framework of resource-oriented OFDI at the theoretical level.Empirically,this paper verifies how the bilateral economic distance,institutional quality,arable land resources of the BRI countries and other factors influence the location choice,scale and decision-making of China's investment on the arable land of those countries,and then conducts robustness tests.Furthermore,through calculating the location entropy of corps,econometric models are leveraged to clarify how arable land resources in different regions with varying economic levels contribute to the agglomeration of crop industries.The empirical analysis of this paper plays complementary to China's empirical research on arable land investment in the BRI.The paper primarily draws the following conclusions:(1)The spatial distribution of various indicators of arable land resources in the BRI countries varies significantly.Among all the arable land evaluation indicators,renewable freshwater resources and irrigable arable land coverage account for a high proportion,implying that the quality of arable land is essential.(2)The impact of location characteristics of the host country is conditional on different stages,that is,whether Chinese companies are at the location choice stage or the decision-making stage.At the location choice stage,critical influence factors include the BRI countries' economic distance with China,the approximate total factor productivity(“ATFP”)of agriculture and the geographic distance to China.At the decision-making stage,Chinese companies tend to value the host country's arable land resources,corruption level,ATFP of agriculture,and geographic distance.Whether the arable land resources of the host country are attractive to China's investment is negatively regulated by the level of corruption,while the effectiveness of the government and market size reinforce China's investment on those countries' arable land.(3)China needs to adapt to local conditions when carrying out investment cooperation.In underdeveloped areas,attention should be paid to protecting waterand soil resources and farmers' livelihoods to ensure food security in developing countries;in economically developed areas,it should focus on the circulation and sales of agricultural products,and underpinning connections with local markets,so as to guarantee the sustainable development of arable land investment on BRI countries.Finally,this paper proposes corresponding suggestions at the policy-making level and for enterprises after scrutinizing the conclusions.For enterprises:(1)For foreign investment on arable land,at the location choice stage,companies should choose BRI countries with close bilateral economic distance and sound institutional quality;(2)Attention should be paid to protecting local resources and environment,so as to ensure the sustainable development of such investment;(3)Adjust suitable measures to local conditions in BRI countries to carry out investment cooperation.For the government:(1)Attach importance to bilateral economic distance,in ways to create an enabling external environment for China's foreign investment on arable land;(2)Formulate and constantly optimize rules and standards on investing foreign arable land.That's how we can effectively identify enterprises' risks of investing in the host country and mitigate the uncertainty therein.