Research On The Impact Of Digital Infrastructure Level Of Countries Along The "Belt And Road" On China’s OFDI

With the vigorous development of digital economy,more and more foreign direct investment is encouraged by the development of digital.The improvement of digital infrastructure construction in countries along the Belt and Road has direct impact on the location choice of international capital flow and enterprises’ OFDI.At present,Chinese enterprises’ OFDI has obvious resource-seeking motivation,efficiency-seeking motivation and market-seeking motivation.The investment structure is relatively low-end and has little impact on the promotion of domestic industries.While the construction of digital infrastructure and the development of digital economy provide new growth opportunities and structural upgrading paths for China’s OFDI.In order to facilitate the rational distribution of Chinese multinational enterprises’ foreign direct investment and promote the quality improvement and structure optimization of OFDI at the national level,this paper needs to deeply study the influence of digital infrastructure level on Chinese enterprises’ OFDI and its mechanism.Based on the relevant theories and literature of digital infrastructure and foreign direct investment,this paper relies on the development level of digital infrastructure and the actual situation of Chinese enterprises’ foreign direct investment,and selects the data of 60 countries along the "One Belt and One Road" from 2010 to 2020 to build an econometric model and explore its impact.Through empirical analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions: Firstly,the digital infrastructure level of countries along the "One Belt and One Road" has a significant positive impact on the OFDI of Chinese enterprises,and there is a huge gap in the digital infrastructure level of different countries(regions).This result is robust after the robustness test.Secondly,heterogeneity test results show that: in terms of income level,compared with high-income and lower-middle-income countries,the development of digital infrastructure in countries along the middle higher income lines has a more significant promoting effect on Chinese enterprises’ OFDI.In terms of investment motivation and industry,the investment of Chinese enterprises focuses on the market and labor of a country.Labor-intensive enterprises can attract the most foreign capital,followed by capital-intensive enterprises,technology-intensive enterprises and resource-intensive enterprises.Thirdly,the mechanism test results show that the development of digital infrastructure in countries along the Belt and Road can indeed promote Chinese enterprises’ OFDI by reducing the investment cost of enterprises.Based on the above conclusions,this paper provides relevant suggestions for the development of Chinese enterprises’ direct investment decision-making under the Belt and Road Initiative.