China and Natural Resource Curse in Developing Countries : Empirical Evidence from a Cross‐Country Study

China's rising demand for natural resources and its growing presence in many poor and resource‐rich countries have been criticized for promoting neo‐colonialism in the 21st century. Using panel data for 135 developing countries from 1995 to 2007, the present paper empirically evaluates the validity of such claims. Our findings do not support the resource curse thesis in the areas of industrialization and economic growth. Moreover, the effect of resources is conditional on the initial quality of political institutions in a country