In 2020, China became for the first time the world’s largest cross-border investor. With its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has offered a sweeping vision to develop infrastructure, including power generation projects that will lock in technologies for decades.

For those following these developments, the China Overseas Finance Inventory (COFI) is a comprehensive open-source database covering Chinese equity and debt investments in the power-generation sector across the 76 BRI countries. It is a collaboration between the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the Inter-American Dialogue, the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University (CARI) and World Resources Institute (WRI).

Join World Resources Institute and Boston University at 9 AM EST on February 24th, 2022, to discuss the process of building COFI, challenges we encountered, and the key insights we can draw. The webinar will also feature experts in Chinese overseas finance to explore use cases of COFI, key challenges in developing an open-source database, and implications of the quitting overseas coal finance by China.

Presenters:

  • Lihuan Zhou, Associate, WRI
  • Ziyi Ma, Research Analyst, WRI

Panelists:

  • Shuang Liu, Senior Associate, WRI
  • Cecilia Han Springer, Assistant Director for the Global China Initiative, Boston University Global Development Policy Center
  • Deborah Brautigam, Professor, Director, Johns Hopkins University, SAIS China Africa Research Initiative
  • Margaret Myers, Director, Inter-American Dialogue