On the afternoon of May 25, Prof. Qian Xingwang of Economics and Finance at University at Buffalo, State University of New York (UB) was invited as a guest to “The Chen Daisun Theoretical Economics Lecture” at Institute of Economics. There, he gave an academic lecture titled “The Belt and Road Initiative and Chinese Firm Foreign Direct Investment”. The lecture was chaired by Prof. Liu Taoxiong, Director of Institute of Economics, with some teachers and students participating in relevant discussions.
Qian made an in-depth and thorough analysis of the impact of the “Belt and Road” Initiative on Chinese enterprises’ overseas investments. He pointed out that since General Secretary Xi initiated the “Belt and Road” Initiative in September 2013, it had now involved 65 countries, but no scholars made any quantitative research on the impact of the “Belt and Road” Initiative. His lecture is the first to find that the “Belt and Road” Initiative can promote increases in overseas investments by Chinese enterprises from the perspective of quantitative analysis and such investments flow mainly to infrastructure, manufacturing and trade-related industries. Besides, the “Belt and Road” Initiative is also significant for China to solve excess capacity and rebalance its economy. Although both state-owned and private enterprises actively respond to the “Belt and Road” Initiative, private enterprises prefer to investing in countries with high participating enthusiasm.
Finally, Prof. Liu Taoxiong, Sun Zhen and Xie Danxia made comments on the lecture and Prof. Qian had warm discussions with present teachers and students about their questions.
The lecture helps present teachers and students deepen their understanding of the impact of the “Belt and Road” Initiative. The research perspective, methods and final conclusions arouse more considerations about how to study realistic problems in society with economic theories.
Qian has long been focusing on research directions such as international finance and trade from the macroscopic perspective, transnational capital flow in emerging economies, OFDI, foreign exchange reserves and capital control, and has published over 20 papers in SSCI journals, like Journal of International Money and Finance, Review of World Economy, Review of International Economics, etc.
