Championing sustainability: lessons from China?

What is it about?

Flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) continue to define the status of the Asia-Pacific region as both motor and driver of the global economy. In terms of ranking, The United States of America (USA) remains currently the largest recipient of FDI, followed by the United Kingdom, China (Mainland) and then - applying UNCTAD terminology – ‘Hong Kong, China’. A persistent concern among UNCTAD analysts is the enduring mismatch between flows of investment and measurable impact on productivity: for example, falling investment in ‘greenfield’ manufacturing facilities appears to dampen the creation of jobs in regions with high dependency on primary sector employment. In short, UNCTAD along with other transnational agencies appear increasingly to inform their measures of FDI performance (e.g. growth, target, flow) with concerns about sustainability, generally interpreted as meaning an assessment of how FDI might impact on the well-being and life opportunities of future generations of people, and of the planet that should sustain these people. Such concerns are illustrated in the books chosen for review in this essay: for example, in respect of how and why growing and faster-flowing global investments commonly fail to settle and address local questions of sustainability.

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