An Inquiry into the Motives of Chinese Firms’ FDI toward U.S.A.:

A Paradigm of “Strategic Asset Seeking” FDI

Abstract

Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) toward U.S.A. increases rapidly since the beginning of the 21st century. The phenomenon of Chinese firms’ direct investment to U.S.A. submits various topics to us. Why does a developing country like China conduct such a quick and massive FDI toward a top developed country like U.S.A.? What kind of motives are based on for such FDI? Compared with their rivals in U.S. market, Chinese firms are considered to possess less competitive advantages that are fundamentally necessary for investors to survive abroad. Based on the critical points mentioned above, this paper tries to clarify the motives of Chinese FDI toward U.S.A. and forecast the future directionality by analyzing 16 Chinese firm cases that were surveyed by the author.

The paper sets up a hypothesis as follows. The current action of Chinese FDI toward U.S.A. has an obvious motive of “strategic asset seeking” that differs greatly from the motive of FDI conducted by developed countries’ multinational enterprises. In the purpose of verifying the hypothesis, the paper analyzed two different assets, “strategic asset” and “natural asset”, obtained by sample Chinese firms that possess local subsidiaries in U.S.A. An interesting and shocking fact was found. Fewer sample Chinese firms demonstrated the motive as acquiring “natural asset”. In contrast, all the sample firms showed their clear motive of obtaining“ strategic asset” from local American firms.

The fact finding in this paper strongly implies that the forthcoming Chinese firms’ outward FDI in a short or middle run will be implemented based on the following motive. The FDI toward developed markets shows strong “strategic asset seeking” tendency while the FDI toward developing markets has other motives as “natural assets seeking”, “new market seeking”, “ natural resource seeking”, etc., instead of “strategic asset seeking”.