During the first class period after Thanksgiving break, my group met to discuss our plan of action for the coming weeks. We outlined our final paper, scheduled a date on which to submit our draft, reexamined our literature review, and discussed the division of work among group members. We left class with a rough plan for producing a finished research paper. We still have a sizable quantity of work to do, as much of our data remains to be gathered, and the analysis itself will need to be run after that. Most particularly, we have discovered that  finding sources of data on Chinese FDI in Africa elusive, although there is plenty of literature that makes broad claims about the nature and purpose of that FDI. This is an interesting trend, one that raises the possibility that perhaps this is an area that could benefit from the application of a careful quantitative analysis of broad trends, such as we wish to conduct.

I am returning to my blog after a long hiatus that has primarily been due to my being swamped with work preparing for Ring Figure. My strategy for preventing this from occurring again is two-fold: I will set a reminder on my calendar to post every week, and will stop being so perfectionistic about what I write. This last part will be especially hard for me, but I will simply write down my reflections in rough form, and edit them later when I have time.

In the interlude, my group has moved towards formalizing our theory. We propose the following: If China increases investment in African countries, then it will further its strategic goals by being be able to extract a greater number of natural resources from these countries (measured in barrels of oil/cubic feet of natural gas exported to China), secure markets for Chinese exports (USD value of Chinese exports per country), as well as boost political legitimacy (measured through the countries’ renouncing of Taiwan). We will likely focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, but are considering including Northern Africa as a control.

I have a couple concerns about our theory at this point: first, we need to further define our independent variable by determining exactly what types of Chinese financial activity we will include in our definition of “investment.” Will we include loans? Investment by state-owned Chinese companies? What about foreign aid? Second, we need to work on the causal mechanism; how exactly does Chinese investment lead to these results? What if, instead of investment causing increases in hydrocarbon imports, trade, and derecognition of Taiwan, Chinese investment naturally flows to African countries that already have these traits? We will also need to come up with a list of control variables.