中国企业对“一带一路”沿线国家的交通投资效应:发展效应还是债务陷阱

The Chinese Overseas Transportation Investment Effect in Countries along the Belt and Road: Development Effect or Debt Trap

本文基于2005—2018年“中国全球投资跟踪”微观数据库构造了中国企业对外投资的“国家—行业—年份”三维面板集,采用三重差分法研究了“一带一路”倡议对中国企业在沿线国家交通行业的投资效应,为批驳近年来一些西方国家大肆渲染的“一带一路”倡议的“债务陷阱论”提供了经验证据。研究发现,“一带一路”倡议显著加大了中国企业对沿线国家交通行业的投资规模,与此同时却未显著增加交通“问题投资”。因而,“债务陷阱论”所认为的“一带一路”倡议试图引致对外交通问题投资进而采用免去债务手段换取东道国主权让渡的观点缺乏证据支持。在经过一系列稳健性检验与识别策略检验后,这一结论依然成立。分样本及机制讨论的结果显示,“一带一路”倡议主要推动国有企业产生对沿线国家交通投资的发展效应,并且企业投资模式偏向跨国并购。发展效应受益地区主要是“一路”沿线国家以及亚洲地区,并且发展效应主要源自新进入企业的投资而非已有企业的再投资。此外,本文还发现“一带一路”倡议并未显著提升企业对外交通投资股权占比,也没有加剧沿线国家债务增长。这一结论表明,“债务陷阱论”针对“一带一路”倡议的种种指责都是失实的。

In recent years, the western countries criticize that the Belt and Road Initiative causing countries along the route to fall into debt traps. To criticize this opinion, this paper evaluates the transportation investment effect of the Belt and Road Initiative using the DDD regression by exploring country-industry-year panel data based on China Global Investment Tracker database during 2005-2018. The results show that the Belt and Road Initiative has significantly increased the Chinese overseas transportation investment in countries along the route, while has not incurred transportation investment into a lot more trouble. Therefore, the criticism of debt trap, which argues that the Belt and Road Initiative increasing countries’ debt and then incurring transportation investment into a lot more trouble, is short of evidence. The conclusion is robust to a series of robustness tests and identification strategy tests. Further results show that the Belt and Road Initiative mainly promotes state-owned enterprises’ transportation investment, and the enterprises prefer cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The countries along the “One Road”, especially in Asia, benefit more from the Belt and Road Initiative, and transportation development effect of the Belt and Road Initiative comes from new entrants instead of existing ones. In addition, this paper also found that the Belt and Road Initiative has not significantly increased the equity share of overseas transportation investment, nor did it increase the debt of the countries along the route. This conclusion shows that all the accusations by “debt trap theory” against the Belt and Road Initiative are false.