| Building "One Belt and One Road" with high quality and promoting the deep integration of the regions along the route are important strategic initiatives for China’s opening up to the outside world in the new development stage.Therefore,it is difficult to avoid the important issue of revealing the distribution pattern of direct investment network among the countries along the route and how the status of each network changes,and finally exploring the causes behind it.Based on the international direct investment matrix data,this paper examines the evolution characteristics of direct investment networks and their causes in the countries along the Belt and Road from2003 to 2019 using social network analysis(SNA)and quadratic assignment procedure(QAP).The results show that the DDI networks of the countries along the Belt and Road have been expanding and becoming more closely connected,but the degree of integration has decreased,and a "multipolar" distribution pattern has been formed with Singapore,Indonesia,China and Vietnam as the centers;the network status of each country shows a non-homogeneous distribution of "high minority,low majority"."The number of countries with rising network status has increased significantly after the "Belt and Road" initiative;physical infrastructure facilitation gap,institutional distance,labor cost difference and common language explain 34%of the FDI network evolution.evolution,with stage differences in the roles of the four.Compared with the existing literature,the marginal contributions of this paper are: first,it takes into account the "third country effect" of international direct investment,and analyzes the structural distribution of direct investment networks of the countries along the route by constructing a topological directed network of direct investment in the countries along the route,which makes up for the existing literature’s deficiency of analyzing from the local perspective of bilateral relations and enriches the existing literature on direct investment networks of the countries along the route.It also enriches the existing research on the direct investment networks of the countries along the route.Second,using longer sample data,the SNA method is used to analyze the distribution and relative changes in the status of direct investment networks of countries along the route,identify the strengths and weaknesses of countries’ control over investment resources,and provide references for targeting and accelerating the integration of investment networks between China and the regions along the route;third,the QAP method is used to further analyze the causes behind the evolution of direct investment networks of countries along the route,and provide references for high-quality joint construction of Third,the QAP method is used to further analyze the causes behind the evolution of the FDI networks of the countries along the route,so as to provide policy references for the high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road".This paper proposes that China should strengthen its infrastructure cooperation with other countries based on a comprehensive consideration of their interests and concerns,while paying attention to the factors of institutional and cultural distance,so as to lay a solid foundation for the high-quality co-build of "One Belt,One Road". |
