Study On Geopolitical Risks And Formation Mechanism Of China’s Direct Investment In African Countries

The world today is at a critical juncture of "profound changes unseen in a century".The global political landscape is evolving at an accelerating pace.Developing countries,represented by China,are embracing an unprecedented period of strategic opportunities and rising as emerging powers.As the world’s second largest economy,China has not only benefited from economic globalization and regional economic cooperation,but also promoted and maintained it.China is the largest source of investment among developing countries in the world,and outbound investment has become one of the main ways of economic cooperation between China and other countries.Africa,the world’s second largest continent with 60 countries(regions),is China’s most sincere and reliable cooperative partner.Due to its unique geographical location,rich natural resources and huge space for economic development,Africa has become one of the regions with the greatest development potential in the 21st century.Today,China’s direct investment in Africa is growing rapidly.After 2013,China surpassed the United States to become the continent’s largest source of investment.At the same time,faced with the combined impact of multiple factors,such as the violent international situation,weak recovery of the world economy,accelerating adjustment of the global economic pattern,rising investment protectionism and containment of the rise of China by Western powers,the change of overseas investment environment is relatively uncertain,and the occurrence probability of geopolitical risks has increased.Therefore,it is a topic of great theoretical and practical significance to study the geopolitical risks of China’s direct investment in African countries.This study takes the theory of foreign direct investment and geopolitical theory as the theoretical basis,literature research method,regression analysis method,geographical probe,GIS spatial analysis method,interdisciplinary research method and other methods as the research tools.Based on the relevant data and data from 2010 to2021,The pattern of China’s direct investment in African countries is analyzed from the Angle of qualitative and quantitative combination.By referring to the geopolitical risk assessment system established by relevant scholars,and on this basis,according to the specific situation of China’s direct investment in African countries,21 three-level indicators for the assessment of geopolitical risk of direct investment are selected from four dimensions,namely political risk,economic risk,social risk and international relations risk.This paper establishes the geopolitical risk assessment system of China’s direct investment in African countries,and evaluates the geopolitical risk of China’s direct investment in African countries.On this basis,the connotation,constituent factors and formation process of geopolitical risks of China’s direct investment in African countries are described qualitatively,and the single factor detection and interaction detection of geographical detector are used to identify the main factors of the formation mechanism of geopolitical risks of direct investment in African countries.The formation mechanism of geopolitical risk of China’s direct investment in African countries is analyzed quantitatively.The findings are as follows:(1)The geopolitical risks of African countries differ significantly in terms of country and spatial and temporal distribution,but on the whole,the geopolitical risks of African countries show a trend of gradual decline.The general regression method is used to calculate that among 27 African countries,Sudan ranks the highest in geopolitical risk,while South Africa ranks the last with the lowest risk score.From a vertical analysis,geopolitical risks in most of the 27 African countries show a downward trend amid fluctuations.(2)China’s direct investment in African countries has significant regional differences and fluctuates with the changes of geopolitical risks in host countries in different periods.Taking the data of 2010 as an example,South Africa has the largest investment in 27 African countries($411 million),while Cote d ’Ivoire has the smallest investment(-$50.2 billion).By 2021,the country with the largest investment is the Democratic Republic of Congo($1.046 billion).(3)The influence of various factors on the formation mechanism of geopolitical risk in African countries is significantly different.Through the analysis of the single factor detection results,it is found that the three factors with the highest explanatory power for 2021 geopolitical risk are economic growth(0.60),administrative efficiency(0.40)and debt index(0.39),while terrorism activity(0.05)is the lowest explanatory power.(4)After all factors of geopolitical risk are formed into a group of two factors,their influence will be significantly enhanced.For example,by comparing the single factor detection results with the interactive detection results,it is found that the influence of the bilateral spatial relationship between the factor and China(0.12)on geopolitical risk will be increased after the interaction detection of any factor(q value ≥0.12).The research conclusion of this paper has implications for the risk avoidance of China’s direct investment in Africa and the expansion of Chinese enterprises’ direct investment in African countries.