Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard Presents Wong MNC Center Research Projects at 2024 International Studies Association Annual Meeting

Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center), made two separate presentations of Wong MNC Center research projects at the 2024 International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. The ISA Annual Meeting is one of the world’s largest gatherings of international relations and foreign policy specialists. In one speech entitled “The Effects of China’s Digital Silk Road [DSR]: Cases from Southeast Asia,” Dr. Blanchard gave an overview of the DSR, highlighted its aims, and identified limits to the existing literature. He also surveyed the potential good and bad economic and political effects of the DSR. Furthermore, Dr. Blanchard presented the Center’s research on the DSR’s footprint in, respectively, Malaysia and Thailand and its economic and political consequences in both countries. He noted that the DSR has a relatively muted presence and that its effects seemed rather muted. The second speech that Dr. Blanchard delivered was entitled “The Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) Effects: Lessons from Chinese OFDI in Southeast Asia.” He summarized some of the findings flowing from a Wong MNC Center orchestrated project looking at the effects of Chinese OFDI in Southeast Asia, concentrating on findings pertaining to four Southeast Asian countries and four effects (general economic, employment, technology transfer, and domestic political). Dr. Blanchard reported there were limited general economic effects, positive, but bounded employment effects, almost no meaningful technology transfer effects, and no particularly noteworthy domestic political effects.