Environmental Effects of China’s Overseas Direct Investment in South Asia

This paper attempts to analyze the effects of China’s outward direct investment on environmental pollution in selected South Asian countries from 2004 to 2019 under framework of environmental Kuznet curve hypothesis. This empirical work is accomplished through fully modified ordinary least square. The findings of the full panel of fully modified ordinary least square indicates that China’s outward direct investment significantly spurs carbon emissions by (9.9%), which destroy the environment quality in the region. However, the estimated coefficients of the full panel of the fully modified ordinary least square indicates that (+) and (−) values of GDP and GDP square validate the environmental Kuznet curve hypothesis existence in the South Asia economies. Furthermore, when taking the individual countries, the environment consequences, individual characteristics of the countries and the GDP growth shows various temporal pattern of KEC hypothesis. Like in India there exist inverted U-shape curve, while Pakistan and Nepal manifest U-shape curve, whereas Bangladesh shows N-shape curve. Furthermore, this paper has identified bidirectional causality between economic growth, energy, financial development and carbon emissions. The empirical evidence implies that when governments consider foreign direct investment, they should priorities environmental protection mechanisms.