Research On Overseas Arable Land Investment Of Chinese Enterprises In The Context Of “the Belt And Road”:Investment Potential,cooperation Behavior And Public Opinion Risk

Since the reform and opening up,China has made great achievements in agricultural development,becoming the world’s largest grain producing country,and achieving the food security goal of "basically self-sufficiency in grains and absolutely safe food rations".However,factors such as the decrease in available arable land resources,the decline in the quality of arable land,and the slow growth rate of grain yields have also led to a large reliance on imports to ensure national food security.At the same time,the evolution of the international grain trade pattern,the strengthening of technical barriers and environmental barriers in Western developed countries,and the spread of the novel coronavirus pneumonia(COVID-19)have puts China’s grain trade at a disadvantage.The change in the concept of security brought about by the epidemic has brought the world into a period of turbulence and change,with a marked increase in instability and uncertainty.China is facing an era of great changes unseen in a century.In 2019,the “No.1 Document”of the central government focused on accelerating and supporting the agricultural going out,deploying the "Belt and Road" agricultural international cooperation,and improving the level of agricultural foreign cooperation.In 2021,the "No.1 Document" of the central government once again focused on food security,which regarded supporting the integration of enterprises into the global agricultural supply chain and improving the ability to ensure food supply as the primary task of accelerating the modernization of agriculture.In this context,some countries set their sights on Africa,Asia and other sparsely populated countries,in order to use their arable land resources to produce grain to solve their own food problems.The academic community collectively calls this behavior "overseas arable land investment".At present,China’s overseas arable land investment is mainly concentrated in Africa,Southeast Asia,South America and other countries.However,due to the late start of Chinese enterprises "going out" to carry out overseas investment,the competition with other countries is very unfavorable.status.Finding areas with high natural resource endowments and great potential for arable land for investment has gradually become one of the important directions of my country’s grain foreign cooperation.The countries along the “The Belt and Road”are the most important cereal grain producing areas in the world,and their cereal output accounts for more than 40% of the world’s total cereal output.These countries have abundant agricultural resources,more undeveloped arable land,and huge investment potential.“The Belt and Road” initiative and related policies have also created favorable conditions for China’s overseas arable land investment.However,with the continuous expansion of investment scale,the cases of investment failures due to cultural differences,limited risk awareness and risk control ability of overseas arable land investment are also increasing year by year.Overseas arable land investment is a complex and systematic project.From site selection in the host country,market research,policy communication,contract signing to arable land crop planting,acquisition,logistics,processing,and sales,mistakes in any aspect will cause incalculable losses to the enterprise.In addition,China’s overseas arable land investment has always been accompanied by accusations of "China threat theory","debt trap" and "neo-colonialism".Some Western media have smeared the image of Chinese companies by setting up "China issues" and politicized China’s overseas arable land investment,resulting in civil protests,the project was forced to be suspended,a large amount of initial investment could not be recovered,and the losses were heavy.Therefore,several questions worthy of attention in the process of overseas arable land investment are,what characteristics does China’s overseas farmland investment present at present? Which countries and regions have greater investment potential? What are the cooperative behaviors of Chinese "going out" enterprises targeting host countries with different arable land investment potentials? Especially when faced with unfavorable public opinion after the outbreak,what coping strategies should be adopted? How to build a systematic overseas farmland investment guarantee system to reduce investment risks comprehensively? This research will focus on discussing these issues,which are helpful for grasping the development direction of the layout of arable land investment,understanding the willingness and behavior of the host country government and the public to participate,reducing the risk of negative public opinion.In the context of “The Belt and Road”,this research uses systematic theoretical tools to carry out qualitative and quantitative research on key issues in the process of overseas arable land investment.On the basis of relevant concept definition,literature review and review,theoretical review and analysis,descriptive statistics,spatial statistical analysis,evolutionary games,econometric models and other methods are comprehensively used.Based on the macro-statistical data of 119 countries along the "Belt and Road" and the micro-investigation data of typical "going out" enterprises,this paper focuses on the detailed analysis of the global arable land resources,the status quo of China’s overseas arable land investment,and the potential and size of the host country’s overseas arable land investment.Spatial distribution characteristics,cooperative behavior characteristics of China’s "going out" investment in overseas arable land,and strategic choice of China’s overseas arable land investment under the dilemma of public opinion.Further,the theoretical analysis framework of "the measurement and spatial characteristics of the host country’s arable land investment potential-arable land investment cooperation behavior-arable land investment strategy-arable land investment guarantee system" was constructed to examine the location selection of "going out",how to reduce investment risks through cooperative behavior,how to make strategic choices in the case of unfavorable public opinion and use the viewpoint of system theory to conduct overall analysis and risk protection.Based on the comprehensive analysis of the above content and based on China’s actual national conditions,corresponding policy implications are put forward.Specifically,the main research contents and research conclusions obtained include the following aspects:(1)Asian countries led by Kazakhstan and Indonesia and African countries led by South Africa and Nigeria have generally higher arable land investment potentials,while South American and European countries have relatively low arable land investment potentials.Further clustering results show that African and Asian countries have resource endowments and production potential.The conditions are good,but the economic level and political environment are poor.European countries,on the contrary,have better economic level and political environment;The second is production conditions,with a weight of 21.15%.The remaining two dimensions,economic level and political environment,contribute less to the potential of cultivated land investment.From the perspective of potential,there is no significant difference in the number of countries along the “Belt and Road” in 2010,2016 and 2018.The potential value of cultivated land in each country is estimated by the entropy method.There are obvious geographical differences,and the average potential value in 2018 is slightly lower than that in 2010.From the perspective of the spatial pattern,the results of the global Moran’I index show that,except for 2018,the potential of arable land investment in countries along the "Belt and Road" in 2010 and 2016 has a significant negative correlation in spatial distribution,and the potential is in the spatial distribution.Dispersion and difference are greater than agglomeration.Compared with 2010,both the negative correlation and the degree of dispersion decreased in 2016.In the criterion layer,resource endowment also has a significant negative correlation in space,and the spatial correlation of other variables is not significant.The Moran’I scatterplot shows that countries with low investment potential in arable land dominate,and there are more and contiguous countries belonging to the low-low and high-low types,and the distribution has obvious spatial heterogeneity.From the perspective of distribution law and trend,the potential of cultivated land investment in the countries along the “Belt and Road” shows a two-level pattern of differentiation and remains stable.The investment potential of most countries will be concentrated between 0.1 and 0.2 for a long time.High in the west and low in the west,the north and south are "U"-shaped,and the difference in the north-south direction is larger than the difference in the east-west direction.(2)There are four evolutionary stable points in the tripartite evolutionary game model of Chinese enterprises,the host country government,and the host country landowners,which can reach a stable state,corresponding to the different strategic choices of the three parties.When Chinese enterprises choose "independent management" or "cooperative management",they tend to respond more quickly to the strategic choices of the host country government and the host country’s landowners,and are more sensitive to the evolution path.The host government takes the longest time to achieve equilibrium,and the evolution path is the most stable.Strategic choices are less influenced by Chinese companies and host country landowners.The host government’s "loss aversion" mentality often makes it hesitant and slow to formulate "high support" strategies that benefit Chinese corporate policies.Be firm and quick in crafting "low support" strategies that are detrimental to Chinese corporate strategy.This puts forward higher requirements for the stability and long-term of Chinese enterprises’ overseas arable land investment.(3)An important prerequisite for Chinese enterprises to successfully carry out overseas arable land investment is to achieve win-win cooperation with relevant stakeholders such as the host country government and host country landowners.All parties involved in overseas arable land investment jointly influence the evolution direction of public opinion in the host country.The strategic choices among Chinese companies,host governments,host land owners,and foreign competitors are intertwined and affect each other.The adjustment of any party’s actions will change the income of other subjects in the system,thereby changing the evolution direction of public opinion.In particular,the existence of the "Filter Bubble" effect will exacerbate the spread of online public opinion,which will rapidly increase the public opinion risk that the host country’s landowners who choose the "compliance" strategy need to bear.And then tend to choose the "non-compliance" strategy is more likely.This will cause huge risks to China’s overseas arable land investment projects.The government of the host country plays an important role in the formation and diffusion of online public opinion.During the evolution of online public opinion on overseas arable land investment,the actions of the host country’s government departments will profoundly affect or even change the evolutionary direction of the host country’s social public opinion.Finally,based on the summary of the research conclusions,the following policy implications are put forward: Accurately grasp the resource endowment of each country and optimize the investment layout;fully consider the interests and demands of the host country to achieve win-win cooperation;establish a good social network relationship with the local society through social embedding and other methods to make up for the "outsider disadvantage";Pay attention to the role of the host country’s government in the evolution of online public opinion;systematically establish a guarantee system for overseas farmland investment.The innovations of this paper mainly focus on: expanding the research perspective of the theory of arable land resource security;solving the problem of difficult location selection of overseas arable land investment by Chinese "going out" enterprises from the macro level;introducing evolutionary game theory into the different participation of overseas arable land investment Cooperative behavior of the main body;for the first time,the game theory research on the evolution of online public opinion on overseas farmland investment has been realized.