The Misunderstanding of China’s Investment, and a Clarification: “Faustian Bargain” or “Good Bargain”? On the OFDI Data of Central and Eastern Europe

The close development of the economic relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 2012 has triggered the European Union’s criticism of China’s foreign policy towards Eastern European countries. The European Union believes that China’s investment growth has led to a governance crisis in CEE countries. Based on the global governance indicators of the World Bank and the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) data of the Ministry of Commerce of China, this paper conducts a test using the panel data model and the regression discontinuity method. An imbalanced panel dataset is adopted, covering 16 CEE countries from 2000 to 2018. The empirical research results indicate that, representing a small proportion of the investment inflows to CEE countries, China is not yet able to exert a domination effect on the region, and China’s economic power is far less than the European Union’s regulatory influence. Furthermore, China’s share of the OFDI in CEE has a U-shaped effect on the regulatory quality of host countries, and the two have a mutually causal relationship. Specifically, the impact on the host country’s regulatory quality is first manifested in the Shanghai effect, and when China’s share reaches a certain level, it is manifested in the California effect. The U-shaped effect is associated with the strategic factors of CEE countries and China’s positive contribution to good global governance.