抄録
While China is now firmly established as one of the world's most important destinations for inward FDI, outward FDI by Chinese companies has also taken off spectacularly. Despite the challenging economic environment, Chinese overseas investment continued to grow since the happening of world financial crisis in 2008.
However, aggressive outward FDI from China raised various questions at both empirical and theoretical levels. Among them, industrial competitiveness of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) is regarded as one of the core concerns which is traditionally paid special attention by the mainstream of MNEs literatures. The data used in the paper comes from the survey conducted in the past three years in four ASEAN countries. The concerns of the paper focus on how Chinese MNEs compete with the front runners—Japanese and Korean MNEs in ASEAN market and how they establish their industrial competitiveness. The paper aims at clarifying the current industrial competitiveness and the potentials of Chinese MNEs. The major factfindings in the paper are as follows. (1) Chinese MNEs in ASEAN market are just situated at the initial stage of overseas business path while their rivals, Japanese and Korean MNEs have marched to the matured stage. But this does not at all mean that Chinese MNEs have no chance to win. Actually Chinese MNEs engaged in some certain segments have shown relatively strong competitiveness at the very beginning. (2) Chinese MNEs engaged in different industries show different competitive advantages in ASEAN market. Electronics-related firms show stronger competitiveness while automobile-related firms are relatively weak at present. Furthermore, (3) Chinese MNEs engaged in electronics segment show very high potentials to conquer their rivals in the near future.
