Is China different from other investors in global land acquisition? Some observations from existing deals in China's Going Global Strategy

In recent years, China's overseas agricultural investment has maintained rapid growth and also received increasing international attention. Towards this very important disputed aim, there are few empirical studies focusing on China's distinctions and similarity with other countries, and hence its implication to adapt the state-driven Going Global Strategy, which provides support to promote agricultural globalisation. In this paper, the main characteristics of overseas land investment including the scale, geographic distribution, utilisation and investment mode are compared using Land Matrix networks as major sources of data. Results show that China is one of the world's major overseas land investors but far from the most important one, with projects mainly located in East Asia and the Pacific region other than the widely disputed sub-Saharan Africa. China's major investing sectors are concentrated on non-food crops and located in countries with a lower transparency index, as done by other countries. Despite insufficient evidence, the state-owned enterprises are heavily involved in overseas investment. China shows no large differences from other countries in terms of size, region and utilisation. It is the serious concern for China's development outsourcing and food-based globalisation that make China's case unique or even make China's role exaggerated and distorted. For this reason, China should focus on continuous and steady improvement in the comprehensive production capacity of domestic agriculture and ensure grain self-sufficiency as a precondition for Going Global. Promotion and application of international rules at both the national and business level, and active information collection and disclosure towards overseas investment, will help eliminate misunderstandings or even rumours. More importantly, performance-related support should be built to effectively guide the investment, and fair, inclusive and mutually beneficial localised business models should be promoted to realise the win-win purpose. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.