Chinese Official Financing in Sub-Saharan Africa - What are its effects on Africans' regime preferences?

Sammanfattning: China's rising development financing activities have attracted considerable attention especially after the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. While Chinese official financing can help fill the infrastructure gap that is seen as an important obstacle to development in most African nations, there is widespread concern for its potentially adverse effects on political norms and good governance. Contributing to existing literature about Chinese official financing, foreign aid and their effects, this thesis wants to investigate the role Chinese financing may play as an instrument for the promotion and legitimization of China's authoritarian development model and political system. Based on existing literature, I establish several links through which citizens affected by Chinese development projects will change their support for and approval of democratic and autocratic political systems. Combining geocoded data on Chinese official finance flows from 2000 to 2014 and six rounds of geocoded public opinion survey data for twelve countries with a quasi-experimental design, local effects of Chinese development projects on regime preferences are identified. My empirical findings indicate a positive effect on support for democracy in unstable democracies as well as increased disapproval of presidential dictatorships in countries with stable democratic regimes.