Evolutionary investment network and the emerging energy power in Central Asia: From the perspective of cross-border mergers and acquisitions

Abstract

Central Asia is emerging as an important pole of global economic and political power, thanks to its unique location at the heart of Eurasia and its abundance in energy reserves. This study explores the social power change in Central Asia from the perspective of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by using the social network method. The main results are as follows: (1) The complexity of the energy M&A network has significantly decreased after the financial crisis in 2008. In the meantime, energy M&A became an important way to enhance energy power for buyer countries. Betweenness centrality is becoming the most significant factor affecting energy power, yet the effect of out-degree is weakening. (2) The community underwent multifaceted restructuring, which reflected the shift of energy power in Central Asia. Kazakhstan is the most powerful country in the energy sector in Central Asia. In addition, East Asian countries/regions, represented by China, are actively enhancing their energy power. (3) Different M&A modes reflect various M&A motivations of countries in the energy sector. In the future, more efforts should be made to promote the establishment of a pragmatic and efficient multilateral energy cooperation mechanism and strength the cooperation of the economy and energy finance when China participates in the energy market in Central Asia.

Risks and Strategies of China’s Direct Investment in Central Asia from the Perspective of Big Data

“…For better implement the Belt and Road development strategy and deepen trade cooperation with Central Asian countries, China demands to establish a risk aversion mechanism, do a good job in the analysis of the investment environment and market risk assessment, always maintain the set investment expectations, and establish the corresponding market risk prevention awareness. At the same time, Ze He and others [17] believe that the Belt and Road Initiative has a very obvious regional color. In the future, 3 Advances in Multimedia the implementation of this initiative will change the current territorial spatial pattern and new products will be born.…”

Patent Value Promotion Based on the Technology Proximity Network: An Empirical Analysis of Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare

“…Chang and Huang (2016) studied the influence mechanism of institutional resources in the global cooperative network of astronomical institutions and found that institutional research resources were positively correlated with their network location, but geographical proximity played a more important role in the expansion of the cooperative network. He et al (2020) studied energy M&A networks in Central Asia and found that betweenness centrality became the most important factor affecting energy M&A strength, while the influence of network deviation gradually weakened.…”

The pattern, evolution, and mechanism of venture capital flows in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, China

“…Therefore, a large number of theoretical and empirical studies have depicted the spatial network of urban agglomerations in different dimensions, including stream of people (Li et al, 2020;, logistics (Akhavan et al, 2020), producer service linkages (Yeh et al, 2015) and aviation, high-speed rail and other traffic flows (Cheung et al, 2020). Furthermore, investment in different localities (Pan et al, 2017;He et al, 2020), patent and research paper cooperation network (Li et al, 2019;Ma et al, 2021) have also been studied. The combination of these elements and methods of network analysis reveals the characteristics of functional and institutional network structures of urban agglomerations, which are significant to understand the urban agglomeration space under the spatiotemporal compression by technology and information.…”