Chinese Corporate Outbound Investment in the Eastern Mediterranean Region under Belt and Road Initiative

The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), as the world's highly unstable area with violent conflicts and the origin of the largest refugee population embedded in worldwide debate, is a big hub of some low- and middle-income countries. However, this region also gets universal concentration because of its significance of active quality in tectonics and abundance in energy resources. With the coexistence of both the challenges and the opportunities, nations and corporations have paid more attention to EMR. Inspired by China’s Belt and Road Initiative which was launched to improve regional connectivity and prompt economic cooperation, this paper contributes to distinguish Chinese corporate investment motivations, different forms outward investment and risks in EMR through focusing on the ever-increasing connection between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and China along the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road and the economic boost in global trade through BRI investment. Instead of government-driven investment, new thoughts have been put forward from the perspective of corporate entrepreneurial expansion, such as the phenomena of innovation, revitalizing the industry, and creating cross-national market prospect etc. at the firm level. Case study would be utilized to investigate the corporate entrepreneurship projects in littoral countries of the eastern Mediterranean Sea like Turkey, Egypt etc. to explore the common gains and existing problems on the basis of previous literature and investment projects. Through critical assessment and parallel comparison of the cases, a prediction of future corporate investment momentum would be made for other Chinese transnational enterprises or firms with the intention to operate cross-border business, so as to achieve the broad-based win-win economic objective and cooperation in this area.