Replication Data for: Racing to the Bottom? Chinese Foreign Direct Investment and Collective Labor Rights

Studies have discussed how and if foreign direct investment (FDI) may improvecollective labor rights in host countries. These studies presume FDI is from developeddemocracies to developing countries. Far less discussed is whether this positive effectof FDI on labor rights holds when FDI originates from a developing economy withoppressive labor conditions. The rapid rise of China as a new source of FDI providesan opportunity to examine this question. Using a time-series cross-sectional datasetcovering 123 countries from 2003 to 2017, I test how Chinese FDI influences the collectivelabor rights of host countries in both developing and developed regions and whetherthe effect of Chinese FDI differs from that of FDI from other countries. I find that FDIfrom China is negatively associated with collective labor rights in host countries, whilenon-Chinese FDI does not have such a negative effect. The negative impact of ChineseFDI on collective labor rights is more pronounced in host countries in developingregions than in developed regions.