Spatiotemporal Evolution, Regional Disparities, and Convergence Dynamics of China’s Overseas Farmland Investment Risks

Existing research on overseas farmland investment has mainly examined project location, investment scale, host-country determinants, and individual dimensions of investment risk, while comparatively little is known about how the country-level risk environment confronting overseas agricultural investors evolves spatially, differs across regions, and converges over time. To address this gap, this study conceptualizes China’s overseas farmland investment risk as an ex ante country-level investment-environment risk jointly shaped by host-country political, economic, social, and resource conditions and China–host-country bilateral relations. Using panel data for 38 host countries from 2014 to 2023, we integrate entropy weighting, exploratory spatial data analysis, kernel density estimation, Markov-chain analysis, Dagum Gini decomposition, and convergence models. The results reveal substantial spatial and regional heterogeneity in investment risks, together with strong persistence in both low- and high-risk states. Overall regional inequality exhibits a fluctuating downward tendency, with interregional differences constituting the largest component of total inequality. Risk dispersion follows a nonlinear temporal path, while the β-convergence results indicate heterogeneous adjustment toward steady states across regions. Theoretically, this study extends overseas farmland investment research from static project-location analysis toward a dynamic framework linking host-country conditions, bilateral relations, spatial dependence, and risk convergence. Empirically, it provides cross-regional evidence on the evolution, decomposition, and convergence of investment risk across four regions. Practically, the findings support differentiated risk governance by Chinese authorities, investing enterprises, host-country governments, and regional institutions.