Study On Foreign Student Education In China And China's OFDI To Countries Along "the Belt And Road"

With the acceleration of regional economic integration,global trade and investment patterns are undergoing profound adjustments.In order to adapt to the changes in the new international economic structure,the concept of "The Belt and Road Initiative" has come into being,which is of great significance to the promotion of China's new round of opening-up and the common development of countries along the routes.Countries along"the Belt and Road" have gradually become not only one of the important locations for China's OFDI,but also one of the important targets for exchanges in terms of talents and culture.Therefore,under the strategic framework of "The Belt and Road Initiative",this paper expands the traditional view of studying the factors that affect China's OFDI and focuses on whether there is a correlation between developing international students education and China's OFDI,which not only helps better understand the role of foreign students in China's overseas investment,but also help government departments develop more effective policies.This paper comprehensively used empirical analysis and comparative analysis to investigate the relationship between international student education and China's OFDI based on 2006-2015 investment panel data of 44 "The Belt and Road" countries.Estimates of the whole sample showed that the scale of foreign student education in China has an obvious positive effect on China's direct investment to their countries.China's OFDI to countries along the routes prefers countries that have much lower economic development level.In order to further understand whether this positive effect will change with the development level of the host country,the scale of students and the geographical distance between host country and China,this paper introduced cross term variables and test the data by classification on the basis of these three dimensions respectively.This paper found that students from countries with different levels of economic development all have positive effect on China's OFDI.In addition,the "Belt and Road Initiative" covers many countries with great differences in religion and politics.Large geographical distance significantly impedes the communication between two countries and is not conducive for students in host countries to make decisions to study in China.Consequently,foreign student education in China can no longer promote China's OFDI to countries along the routes.From what has been mentioned above,while China's direct investment in countries along the "Belt and Road" has concentrated on neighboring countries and regions with relatively small geographical distances and cultural distances,we should weaken cultural distance through various formal and informal trade and cultural exchanges to improve the pattern of China's OFDI.This paper also found that using preferential policy such as scholarship to attract more foreign student proved to have promoting effect of foreign student education in China on China's OFDI.Therefore,this paper suggests the government realize this promoting effect,optimize Chinese immigration policy,and formulate relatively complete education plan for students from countries along "The Belt and Road" to further develop effective international talent strategy and investment policies.Moreover,universities should improve the talent training mode to ensure the steady and sustainable development of China's OFDI.The innovations of this paper lie in the following two aspects.For one thing,this paper systematically summarizes the results of relevant literature and researches,and takes talents exchange into consideration to discuss the relationship between foreign student education in China and China's OFDI to countries along "The Belt and Road" from both domestic and international perspectives,which is a breakthrough of former researches.For another,this paper classified countries along "The Belt and Road" into different groups according to various standards with the hope of providing new ideas to increase China's OFDI and better promoting the implementation of "the Belt and Road Initiative".