China’s Export Trade Effect Of OFDI In Africa

Since the reform and opening up,China has been firmly implementing the "going out" strategy,making full use of "two resources and two markets",while steadily promoting OFDI and export trade.With the acceleration of globalization and the slowdown of international trade since the international financial crisis,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the relationship between OFDI and export trade as well as their effects,so as to realize the balanced development of investment and export trade in tandem.In addition,with the convening of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the proposal of the "Belt and Road",Africa is playing a more and more important role in China’s Cooperation strategy.Therefore,this paper combines the export trade effect of OFDI with China-Africa economic and trade cooperation to study China Export trade effects on OFDI in African countries.Regarding this issue,existing studies mainly focus on the substitution or promotion effect of direct investment on export trade,while the research from the perspective of the digital economy level of the host country is relatively lacking.The research results may provide suggestions for China’s future investment location selection in Africa.Using an extended trade gravity model,this paper selects the data of China’s investment and export trade in 30 African countries between 2009 and 2016 as the research sample and establishes a panel model between OFDI and export trade volume,in order to study the export trade effect of China’s OFDI in African countries.The result show that China’s exports always play a positive effect on these countries.Secondly,whether the overall Networked Readiness Index of the host country or the three sub-indicators:Environment component subindex,Readiness component subindex,and Usage component subindex are affecting China’s exports to these countries.The result shows that China is more inclined to cooperate with countries with a high level of digital economic development in Africa.That is to say,the level of digital economic of the countries in Africa plays a positive moderating effect on the export trade effect of China’s OFDI.Finally,the paper puts forward feasible policy recommendations for the balanced development of investment and export trade at the government,enterprise and national levels basing on the analysis of the empirical results.