Foreign Investment As A Soft Power Influence Strategy

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2024-05-01
Date
2020-05-29
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This research project examines the question of whether or not foreign investment from countries who are known human rights violators influences the rhetoric of the receiving countries towards these violations. Background and data were culled from both qualitative and quantitative sources including both academic and scholarly works as well as both primary and secondary sources of empirical data. The dependent variable examined was the position and attitudes of recipient countries towards said violations. The independent variable examined was foreign investment from countries with known human rights violations. This project determined that liberal democracies who receive a significant amount of foreign investment from a country with known human rights violations tone their rhetoric towards the violating countries' transgressions. The primary example recipient countries were the Federal Republic of Germany and Greece and the primary investor country was the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Germany and Greece are members of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accordingly, their attitudes towards PRC human rights violations are both telling and present both the possibility of foreign influence being exerted via foreign investment and this influence potentially presenting a threat to these alliances via conflict of interest. This influence likely is resultant from a deliberate soft power strategy on behalf of the PRC, as such, this paper provides insight into the influence of foreign investment on recipient country attitudes towards the investor country as well as revealing a systemic and deliberate approach to power projection and acquisition of new spheres of influence by one country towards another.
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Keywords
Soft Power, Foreign Investment, Foreign Direct Investment, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Foreign Direct Investment in Infrastructure
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