This article investigates the effects of China’s outward direct investment (ODI) on the institutional quality of the Belt and Road (B&R) countries. Based on a panel data set of 63 B&R countries during the period 2003 to 2016, we find that China’s ODI improves the institutional quality of B&R countries not only in the short run but also in the long run. Further, although China’s ODI exerts no differential impacts on host country institutional dimensions of “control of corruption,” “government effectiveness,” and “political stability” in countries with different natural resource endowments, it improves their institutional dimensions of “regulatory quality” and “rule of law,” implying that China’s ODI may help the host B&R countries minimize the “resource curse”. As one of the most important strategies for China’s opening-up development in the current era, the B&R initiative serves as means to promote sustainable development of B&R countries. The article therefore contributes to existing scholarship on the institutional effects of China’s ODI and sheds light on the mechanisms that drive sustainable development.
The identification of the driving forces of industrial water pollutant emissions in China is conducive to its effective abatement. It also promotes the coordinated development of China's economic growth and the environment protection. Utilizing the Kaya equation and China's provincial panel data from 1999 to 2015, this paper investigates the spatial-dynamic driving forces governing industrial water pollutant emission. We decompose and quantify the heterogeneous effects of different drivers, that is, technology, energy consumption, and economic size distribution. Applying the LMDI decomposition method, this paper also calculates the contribution of the three drivers to the abatement of industrial water pollutant emissions. The analysis indicates that the most important contribution to pollutant abatement is the development of technology, followed by energy consumption, and the least affected is the distribution of economic scale. In the future, the Chinese government should pay more attention to the impact of energy consumption on pollution abatement. This paper suggests that the Chinese government should improve the clean use of fossil fuel, optimize the energy consumption structure, and develop the use of more clean energy.
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