Do authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones? Empirical evidence for Africa

Tobias Broich*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This study is part of an emerging literature that aims to shed light on China's development finance activities in Africa using quantitative estimation techniques. This paper empirically investigates whether African authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones. I use four different measures of democracy/autocracy which allows me to check whether my results depend on the specific indicator chosen. The OLS results suggest that Chinese development finance does not systematically flow to more authoritarian countries, controlling for strategic, economic, political, institutional and geographic confounding factors. The results are not driven by the specific democracy indicator used in the analysis. The findings remain virtually unchanged if I reduce the sample to Sub-Saharan Africa only. Furthermore, the results stand up to several robustness checks, including FE, RE and instrumental variable estimation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)180-207
Number of pages28
JournalChina Economic Review
Volume46
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2017

Keywords

  • Development finance
  • Foreign aid
  • China
  • Africa
  • Autocracy
  • Democracy
  • FOREIGN-AID
  • EMERGING DONORS
  • BILATERAL AID
  • PANEL-DATA
  • INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES
  • POLITICAL DEMOCRACY
  • LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
  • WEAK INSTRUMENTS
  • SECURITY COUNCIL
  • UNITED-NATIONS

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