2025 JFIPP Research Fellow - Zongyuan Liu

Project Summary

This project explores how Japan has strategically used development finance to enhance its economic security and adapt to major shifts in the global system. It aims to answer the question of how Japan has sustained its global leadership in development finance despite conventional narrative of Japan’s lost decade of economic stagnation. A key dimension of this inquiry is to put Japan’s experience in a comparative context with China’s more recent, high-profile, yet sometimes controversial efforts, as exemplified in the Belt and Road Initiative. Japan’s development finance, primarily through its leading state-led investment institution, Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), has largely avoided controversies and backlash.

To my knowledge, my research on JBIC’s role in bridging Japan’s development finance and economic security will be the first systematic English-language examination of JBIC as a government-owned investment institution and its role in financing Japan’s economic security.

My proposed research project is built upon my doctoral thesis and will primarily use a qualitative research design with elements of mixed-methods analysis to explore the role of JBIC in the evolution of Japan’s development finance strategy, especially in response to the elevated importance of economic security amid unabated U.S.-China strategic competition. The primary objective is to assess how JBIC, as a government-owned investment institution, advances Japan’s national interests and corporate interests to strengthen Japan’s economic security amid a changing global geopolitical environment. The research also aims to evaluate the effectiveness and strategic orientation of JBIC’s financing mechanisms in comparison to other international development finance institutions, such as China’s sovereign funds and policy banks.