CHUN-YI LEE Chun-yi.Lee@nottingham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Buying Taiwan? The Limitations of Mainland Chinese Cross-Strait Direct Investments as a Tool of Economic Statecraft
Lee, Chun-Yi; Knoerich, Jan
Authors
Jan Knoerich
Abstract
Chinese cross-border investments are often assumed to be state-driven and Beijing’s tool of economic statecraft. However, corresponding evidence remains inconclusive. This article examines mainland Chinese direct investments in Taiwan and finds that they have been comparatively ill-suited as instruments of economic statecraft. Their excessive politicisation and the sheer possibility that investments could be used for Beijing’s economic statecraft resulted in a considerable pushback by the Taiwanese government, bureaucrats and civil society against large and sensitive investments. This agency enjoyed by the Taiwanese hindered Beijing from utilising cross-Strait direct investments for political purposes, and Beijing has not openly promoted or supported such investments in Taiwan. Moreover, cross-border direct investments are by nature less exploitable for political purposes because they involve company-level commercial and entrepreneurial decisions. This sets them apart from other forms of economic statecraft, such as sanctions or trade restrictions, where the state has greater influence. Mainland Chinese companies have had limited commercial interests in Taiwan, and investments that have been made there do not appear to have triggered significant political or security externalities. These findings suggest more generally that foreign direct investment might not be particularly conducive for utilisation as a tool of economic statecraft.
Citation
Lee, C., & Knoerich, J. (2024). Buying Taiwan? The Limitations of Mainland Chinese Cross-Strait Direct Investments as a Tool of Economic Statecraft. China Quarterly, 257, 202-221. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741023001029
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jan 10, 2023 |
Online Publication Date | Aug 1, 2023 |
Publication Date | 2024-03 |
Deposit Date | Jan 16, 2023 |
Publicly Available Date | Aug 1, 2023 |
Journal | China Quarterly |
Print ISSN | 0305-7410 |
Electronic ISSN | 1468-2648 |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 257 |
Pages | 202-221 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741023001029 |
Keywords | China, Taiwan, foreign direct investment (FDI), economic statecraft, multinational enterprise |
Public URL | https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/16218045 |
Publisher URL | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/buying-taiwan-the-limitations-of-mainland-chinese-crossstrait-direct-investments-as-a-tool-of-economic-statecraft/54060D70AE154BA64AC4B137B64EB528 |
Additional Information | Copyright: Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London; License: This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.; Free to read: This content has been made available to all. |
Files
Buying Taiwan?
(384 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
You might also like
A new era for studies on cross-Strait relations: introduction
(2013)
Journal Article
Growing or perishing? The development of labour NGOs
(2015)
Book Chapter
Chinese labour in the global economy: an introduction
(2016)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Nottingham
Administrator e-mail: discovery-access-systems@nottingham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search