Diversity of Political Relations：How Substantive vs. Structural Ties Shape China’s Overseas Contracted Projects and Direct Investment Locations

(1) Dependent Variables OCP and ODI data are sourced from the Statistical Yearbook of China’s Foreign Trade & Economic Cooperation and the Statistical Bulletin of China’s ODI. For OCP, available metrics include completed turnover, newly signed contract value, number of contracts, and the number of expatriates. ODI data include both annual flow and stock statistics. All values for OCP and ODI, originally in current USD, are converted to constant 2005 USD and expressed in natural logarithmic. (2) Independent Variables we distinguish between two dimensions of bilateral political relations: “substantive relations” and “structural relations”, proxied by leader visits and UNGA voting alignment, respectively. Based on data from China and 168 host countries. a. Leader Visits. These include both outbound and inbound visits of China’s and foreign top- and second-ranking leaders. All data on leader visits are sourced from China Diplomacy (World Knowledge Press), compiled by the Policy Research Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and manually sorted for consistency. b. UNGA Voting Alignment. To measure structural political relations, this study employs voting data from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The UNGA’s broad agenda and frequent voting sessions provide a suitable context for quantifying diplomatic alignment and the closeness of bilateral ties. Our baseline measure follows Bailey et al. (2017), which applies an Item Response Theory (IRT) model to estimate countries’ ideal point positions based on “yes”, “no”, and “abstain” votes. Bilateral alignment is measured as the absolute distance between two countries’ ideal points; smaller values indicate closer political orientations and greater alignment, reflecting more stable structural political relations. For robustness, we also adopt the approach of Signorino & Ritter (1999), which calculates the proportion of identical votes by two countries in a given year. A higher proportion indicates closer alignment of political stances. (3) Control Variables To control for other potential influences, we incorporate location-specific characteristics of the host country following the gravity model and prior studies. Specifically, we include: (1) GDP (log of constant 2005 US dollars, per $10,000); (2) GDP per capita (log of constant US dollars); (3) patent applications (per 10,000); (4) resource exports (share of fuels, ores, and metals in total exports) sourced from WDI; and (5) infrastructure, proxied by highway density (kilometers of highway per square kilometer), sourced from the CIA’s World Factbook. In addition, two dummy variables are included to capture whether a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) or a free trade agreement (FTA) exists between China and the host country. The data are from the official website of the Ministry of Commerce of China.(1) 因变量 对外承包工程（Outward Contracted Projects, OCP）与对外直接投资（Outward Direct Investment, ODI）数据来源于《中国对外贸易经济合作统计年鉴》及《中国对外直接投资统计公报》。其中OCP的可测指标包括完成营业额、新签合同额、合同数量以及外派人员数量；ODI数据涵盖年度流量与存量统计。所有OCP与ODI的原始数值均以现行美元计价，后续均转换为2005年不变价美元并取自然对数。 (2) 自变量 本研究将双边政治关系划分为“实质性关系”与“结构性关系”两个维度，分别以领导人访问与联合国大会（United Nations General Assembly, UNGA）投票一致性作为代理变量。研究样本覆盖中国与168个东道国。 a. 领导人访问 该指标涵盖中国与外国最高及二级领导人的出访与到访活动。所有领导人访问数据均由外交部政策研究司编纂的《中国外交》（世界知识出版社）提供，并经过人工整理以保证数据一致性。 b. 联合国大会投票一致性 为衡量结构性政治关系，本研究采用联合国大会投票数据。联合国大会广泛的议事议程与高频次投票会议，为量化外交契合度与双边关系亲疏提供了适宜场景。本研究的基准测度方法遵循Bailey等人（2017）的研究框架，即运用项目反应理论（Item Response Theory, IRT）模型，基于“赞成”“反对”与“弃权”三类投票结果估算各国的理想点位置，双边契合度以两国理想点之间的绝对距离衡量：数值越小则代表两国政治立场越趋同、契合度越高，反映出更稳定的结构性政治关系。为开展稳健性检验，本研究同时采用Signorino与Ritter（1999）的测度方法，即计算两国在给定年度内投票完全一致的比例，该比例越高则代表两国政治立场契合度越高。 (3) 控制变量 为控制其他潜在影响因素，本研究遵循引力模型与既往相关研究，纳入东道国的特定区位特征。具体包含以下指标：(1) GDP（以2005年不变价美元计价并取自然对数，单位：万美元）；(2) 人均GDP（以不变价美元计价并取自然对数）；(3) 每万人专利申请量；(4) 资源出口占比（燃料、矿石与金属出口占总出口的份额），数据来源于世界发展指标（World Development Indicators, WDI）；(5) 基础设施水平，以公路密度（每平方公里公路里程）作为代理变量，数据来源于美国中央情报局《世界概况》。此外，本研究纳入两个虚拟变量，以捕捉中国与东道国之间是否存在双边投资协定（Bilateral Investment Treaty, BIT）与自由贸易协定（Free Trade Agreement, FTA），相关数据来源于中国商务部官方网站。