"Policies governing China's overseas development finance: Implications for climate change", Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, MARCH 2018 | NUMBER 016

China’s foreign direct investment began to grow in 1999, and gained further momentum when President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. China is now the largest investor in least-developed countries, in developing Asia, and the fourth-largest investor in Africa. Motivated by concerns about the carbon consequences of China’s overseas investments, this paper identifies and evaluates Chinese policies governing China’s overseas investments, and focuses particularly on how those policies influence environmental outcomes in recipient countries. Policies governing domestic investments are also examined with a view to clarifying inconsistencies between domestic and overseas policies. 

...[The] main conclusion is that while the governance system for overseas investments has generally matured in recent years, the policies governing the environmental dimensions of China’s FDI are still relatively weak and mostly voluntary in nature. The Chinese government has worked hard to streamline the overseas investments approval procedures and has shifted its emphasis to post-investment monitoring and supervision. We further conclude that China’s overseas investment policies are inconsistent with the domestic policies, with domestic policies being more environmentally conscious than overseas policies.