The CHIIA Data in Comparative Perspective

This paper explains the information gap filled by the Chinese Investment in Australia Database (CHIIA). While there are other sources of data on the realisation of Chinese direct investment in Australia, no other source publishes transaction-level data that is classified by ultimate beneficial control and date of realisation. To better understand how CHIIA relates to data on other aspects of Chinese investment in Australia including foreign investment approvals data, the concept of an ‘investment pipeline’ is developed.

This pipeline helps explain why different data sources report very different annual figures. This paper addresses the question ‘What does CHIIA data tell us about Chinese investment in Australia, that we didn’t know before?’.