Qiong Wu, Adam Cross

To What Extent and How Does the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) Influence Post-International Merger & Acquisition Integration Speed and Depth of Chinese Acquirers

Research on international merger and acquisitions (M&As) that originate from emerging economies has highlighted the importance of home country institutions for firms’ strategies of internationalisation. In this paper, we investigate the post-merger and acquisition integration strategies of Chinese companies as they expand their M&A activities abroad. In particular, we examine how home country institutions (especially China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, or BRI) influence these determinants. This paper will identify the gap between existing literature and practice, especially to explain how home country institutions impact on post-international M&A integration strategies and why Chinese firms integrate with variable strategies regarding speed and degree.  

David Tse, Kineta Hung

Book Summary: How Chinese MNCs Shape Firm Globalization Models: Insights and Implications

How have Chinese multinationals benefited from China's economic boom to enable their international expansion? This book is based on many years of original research tracing the emergence, growth and future of Chinese firms in the world economy. The authors seek to provide new perspectives and insights for business executives and graduate students through a comprehensive study of how China's firms globalize and operate, and the implications of this for economic success. Based on detailed case studies and summative examples of successful Chinese firms, Tse and Hung point out their strengths (eg making innovations affordable to many developing nations), their weaknesses (products made in China are not highly regarded) and their mistakes (being insensitive to host economy needs and at times corruptive acts). They argue that the world economy would benefit from engaging with Chinese and other emerging economy firms to learn from the strategies they employ to achieve their global reach.

Mingchun Cao

Intellectual Structure of The Belt and Road Initiative Research: A Scientometric Analysis and Suggestions for A Future Research Agenda

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted increasing attention worldwide since its inception in 2013. Although the research is fast increasing in terms of publications, there is a lack of knowledge about the intellectual structure, research trends, and appropriate theories underpinning. Using bibliometric data from 1,540 articles from 2013 to 2019 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, we use bibliometric techniques and scientometric analyses to identify and analyze the intellectual structure, hotspots, emerging trends in this field. We identified 18 clusters that we categorized into three groups for thematic discussion. Research gaps and future research directions were identified and proposed after qualitative content analysis. By providing the big picture of the latest research on BRI since it was initiated, the paper serves as a one-stop shop for multi-disciplinary research on the topic.

Nael Teklehaimanot, Seyram Avle

Designed in Ethiopia, Made in China

Purpose: Ethiopia and China have gradually forged close relations since 1995, with a number of bilateral agreements signed in various sectors, including manufacturing. This paper presents a case-study of a technology and innovation partnership that leverages Chinese expertise and Ethiopian design as a proposal for rethinking ways of enacting transnational

Design/Method/Approach: This study follows a case study approach that draws on a micro -level analysis of a grassroots initiated program “Designed in Ethiopia''. It includes observational and interview data from key stakeholders in China and Ethiopia.

Findings: ‘Designed in Ethiopia’ showcases a collaborative model between multiple stakeholders in technology design and production in a transnational private public partnership.

Originality/value: Prior studies on Chinese and African work have largely focused on infrastructure, natural resource extraction, etc. Very few foci on technology design or electronics manufacturing or collaborative partnerships. This paper contributes novel data and new insights into alternate modes of transnational partnerships.

Maria Papgeorgiou, Fabio dos Santos Cardoso

China’s Strategic Partnerships Network as The Driving Force of Its Global Rise: A Business Model Approach

China’s impressive economic performance has captivated the interest of the academic community and policymakers regarding its rising potential as a great power. However, little attention has been directed to the role of its extensive network of strategic partnerships in its power projection. Strategic partnerships are considered an essential part of Chinese diplomacy that moves away from strict realist considerations of alliances and security ententes accounting for differences in intensity and areas of cooperation. Borrowing elements of the network model from business studies, this article aims to understand China’s building process as a global power drawing on the similarities with firms’ internationalization process. This study focuses on economic, political and military dimensions examined with the use of descriptive statistics and visualized network analysis during the period 2008-2018. The findings indicate that China’s network expands in different continents and advances its agenda on establishing a benign environment for its rise.

Risto Herraia

Assessing the Global Impact of the Chinese Economy

We study the global impact of the Chinese economy indirectly with a forecast error model. Empirical findings using the real-time World Economic Outlook dataset over the period 2004 ̶ 15 indicate that real GDP growth spillover from China to other countries was primarily negative in the short to mid-term perspective. Negative spillover was prevalent especially during the global financial crisis, and positive spillover during the rest of the sample period. We furthermore show that spillover propagated in the main by influencing price developments in other countries, including via global commodities prices.

Dominique Lepore, Francesca Spigarelli

Green Growth and Innovation Potential in China: An Overview of Regional Disparities

Purpose: In the debated relationship between innovation and green economy, the research aims to provide a mapping on how China is approaching green growth given its innovation potential both at the national and regional level.

Design/methodology/approach: A composite index is built to identify similar groups of regions based on the variables selected as a proxy for innovation potential (dimension 1) and green growth (dimension 2). The mapping is provided for 2017 and 2012 investigating significant variations that occurred in the five-year period under examination.

Findings: The results confirm the existence of regional disparities both for innovation inputs and green initiatives. Jiangsu in the eastern area holds a leading position in both dimensions, showing growing attention to green initiatives respect to 2012. Furthermore, improvements are found in western regions, especially in terms of innovation inputs as in the case of Inner Mongolia.

Cordelia Barzantny, Denise Tsang, Eddy Ng

Age Diversity and Globalization in the Chinese Aerospace Industry

Labor is one of the factors of production that contributes towards economic growth. Mature individuals who are economically active will still be part of this economic process while those who are economically inactive make health and subsistence claims on the labor of others. The increasing life span means that most people could work longer. Building upon existing literature ranging from Economics, Psychology, Management, Neurology and Sociology, this paper develops a conceptual framework that explores longevity advantages. We will use the tacit knowledge intensive industry context of the Chinese aerospace industry for our discussion concerning the advantages of an intergenerational workforce for individuals, firms and the society. We then explore this framework with survey data and arrive at three concrete policy recommendations.

Weifeng Zhong, Julian TszKin Chan

Predicting Authoritarian Crackdowns: A Machine Learning Approach

We have developed a quantitative indicator to predict if and when a series of protests in China, such as the one that began in Hong Kong in 2019, will be met with a Tiananmen-like crackdown. The indicator takes as input protest-related articles published in the People's Daily---the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China. We use a set of machine learning techniques to detect the buildup in the articles of negative propaganda against the protesters, and the method generates a daily mapping between the current date in the Hong Kong protest timeline and the “as if” date in the Tiananmen protest timeline. We call this counterfactual date the Policy Change Index for Crackdown (PCI-Crackdown) for the 2019 Hong Kong protests, showing how close in time it is to the June 4, 1989, crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

Ziyang Xie, Liang Wang

Exploring the New Origin of Competitive Advantages: Returnee Managers from the Target Country on EMNEs’ Globalization

The existing literature has posited that returnee managers, as a scarce resource in the past, can provide an advantage for EMNEs as they expand internationally by providing the much-needed knowledge of and connections to foreign markets. As returnees increasingly tend to become a commodity in emerging markets (e.g., China), however, their value to EMNEs being diminished and can no longer be taken for granted. Our study of cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) by Chinese MNEs (2008-2017) revealed that only returnees from the same country in which a Chinese acquisition is targeted significantly promote the CBA completion than those from other countries. And this relationship is weaker when the firm has accumulated international experience, but stronger for firms investing in a target country with a weak institutional framework.

Leslie Armijo

Economic Tensions between the People's Republic of China and the United States, as Illuminated by International Relations Theory

This article explores the underlying sources of contemporary tensions in China’s relations with the United States. It begins with the classic “three images” for understanding the causes of war: first, the individual perceptions and capabilities of leaders; second, societal characteristics and leaders’ needs to please influential constituents; and third, the structure of the interstate system itself. The qualitative research design investigates and interprets China-United States relations in three international business arenas in the mid to late 2010s: bilateral trade, overseas development assistance and foreign direct investment, and views of the commercial strategies of the Chinese multinational, Huawei. We find that the individual qualities of incumbent political leaders may heighten or ameliorate tensions, but seldom cause them. Societal characteristics influence leaders’ choices by providing political incumbents with an opportunity to address a domestic political economy challenge through foreign policy. Overall, however, a systemic, or third image, approach—focused on the shifting international distribution of capabilities between a powerful yet relatively declining former hegemon and an ambitious and rising challenger—offers the clearest understanding of the timing and arenas of big power economic rivalry. This research approach, familiar to international relations specialists but less so to scholars of global business, yields a fuller picture of contemporary rivalries between the PRC and the US. It has applications for resolving both immediate commercial disputes and longer-run strategic challenges in economic diplomacy.