Geolocated dataset of Chinese overseas development finance

Area of Science:

• Economics
• International Development
• Data Science

Background:

• China is the world's largest provider of bilateral development finance.
• The Belt and Road Initiative is a significant driver of global sovereign lending.
• Accurate tracking of development finance is crucial for economic and environmental analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce enhanced methodologies for tracking China's bilateral development finance.
• To create a comprehensive dataset of Chinese finance commitments from 2008-2019.
• To enable detailed economic, environmental, and social analyses of development projects.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an original application programming interface (API) for multilingual news gathering.
• Implemented double-verification for all finance commitment records.
• Employed visual geo-location for precise project footprint tracing.

Main Results:

• Compiled a dataset of 862 finance commitments to 94 countries (2008-2019).
• 669 commitments include precise geographic locations.
• The dataset facilitates high-precision spatial and spatiotemporal analyses.

Conclusions:

• The enhanced methodology provides a robust tool for monitoring development finance.
• The dataset supports in-depth analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative's impact.
• Improved data accuracy enhances project planning and stakeholder monitoring.