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China has been actively integrating itself in the global economy through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and increasing trade flows. In order to further expand its foreign market ambition and reinforce itself as a leader in the world economic system, China unleashed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). One of the main economic incentives behind this initiative is to strengthen China’s integration with Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets. In recent years, an emerging trend for Chinese investors to invest in CEE countries such as Poland can be observed. The aim of this research is to analyze the changing patterns and motives of Chinese Outbound FDI (OFDI) to Europe during the period of 2009–2017 under the guidance of BRI. To explore the heterogeneity of Chinese investments behavior within Europe, this paper summarizes the apparent characteristics of Chinese investment patterns in Western Europe and the CEE region. We show that BRI has — against all expectations — no impact on Chinese investment in the CEE region but — in line with expectations — Chinese investors have changed their motives to invest in CEE countries with a shift towards the service sector. To investigate the impact of BRI on Chinese investors, the period of study is divided into two phases: (1) 2009–2013: period before the proposal of BRI and (2) 2014–2017: period after the initiation of BRI. Then the rationale behind the observed differences is examined in detail.

Financial development has proven to be one of the major determinants of energy consumption. Although, the U-curve relationship between financial development and energy demand is frequently featured in the literature, there is not much discussion of nonlinear relationships between financial development and energy consumption. In this study we investigated the nexus of these two phenomena in transitional economy countries over the period from 1990 to 2011 employing a Systems-GMM model and the panel cointegration method. The empirical results reveal strong evidence of an inverse U-shaped pattern for the impacts of financial development on energy consumption. The net total effect of financial development on energy demand implies that a one standard deviation increase in financial depth induces a decrease in energy consumption by 0.09 kg of oil equivalent per capita. We also found evidence of Granger causality of financial development on energy demand. The existence of a linkage between the two has been suggested in an earlier study conducted by Coban and Topcu [26]. Although they established the nonlinear nature of the relationship between financial development and energy consumption, this was only apparent after they divided the sample between older and newer EU members. In this respect the effect of financial development on energy consumption is rather dubious because that study used a dynamic panel data model for 15 countries over the period from 1990 to 2011.