Abstract :
Abstract We study the effect of African countries' resource exports to China on the countries' voting alignment with China in the United Nations. Our analysis exploits time variation in the swift surge in China's demand for natural resources and cross-sectional variation in countries' propensity to export resources. We find that an increase in resource exports to China increases the probability of voting in line with China in the United Nations. Interestingly, we observe a stronger effect for resolutions on which China and the United States cast opposite votes. We provide suggestive evidence that public goods and state capacity are possible explanations for our main results. Article Note: We are very grateful to the editor, two anonymous referees, Ying Bai, Esther Duflo, Arthur Lewbel and Yi Lu for insightful comments. Yi Che gratefully acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, grant nos. 72073095 and 71703099) and the Shanghai International Institute of Finance and Economics. Yan Zhang gratefully acknowledges support from the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, grant no. 71703085). CAPTION(S): Supplementary Material Byline: Yi Che, Xiaoyu He, Yan Zhang