Background information
The study What the West Is Investing along China’s New Silk Road was conducted by economists at the University of Duisburg-Essen, who compared the financing received by 25 emerging markets in Central Asia and Africa from China and Western nations. The “Western nations” were defined as 28 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The recipient countries included Afghanistan, Myanmar, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam, Albania, Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.
The study looked at corporate investments and development assistance. It is based on the most recent publicly available data, covering the period from 2013 (official begin of the Silk Road initiative) to 2017. Estimated maximum values were used for China due to the limited comparability of figures from China and Western countries.