Foreign Direct Investment in China
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0109
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0109
Introduction
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China has a long history, much, or even most of it until recently, concerning inward FDI. This history of FDI into China goes back to at least the 18th century, when European traders were establishing their Chinese bases. Even before that the Portuguese had, by 1557, established a strategic foothold in Macau, when it was leased to Portugal by the Chinese empire as a trading port. Macau is now one of two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), on Guangdong’s South China Sea coast, at the western side of the mouth of the Pearl River—the other is, of course, Hong Kong. The biggest cluster of foreign investments in the 19th and early 20th centuries was in Shanghai, the de facto commercial capital of China. However, things did not really “kick on” as might have been expected until the last two decades of the 20th century for a number of reasons: the Chinese civil war; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s; the Second World War itself; and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China nationally from 1949, under Mao Zedong. The last of these led to a quasi-closed economy with anti-foreign policies, which meant not only limited new FDI into China, but also expropriation of the assets of significant, extant foreign invested entities (FIEs), such as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and Jardine Mathieson. (Both still exist, albeit the Bank’s holding company name is now HSBC Plc, with headquarters respectively in London and Bermuda.) The really significant move, seen from the present moment, began with the declaration of the “Open Door Policy” by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, as a means of modernizing and building the PRC economy; this was further facilitated by Deng’s open support and stimulus for the market economy, including foreign investment, in his talks delivered during his “Southern tour” in 1992. In the next twenty years or so, inward FDI built up markedly, at first quite slowly, then with much greater momentum. During that initial twenty-year period, China’s outward FDI was very modest in scale and was mainly aimed at strategic learning. More recently, outward FDI has begun to grow significantly, with strategic acquisitions in established economies, aimed at achieving market positions; and in developing economies in Africa and South America, targeted at accessing the raw materials China needs to fuel its manufacturing engine. The remainder of this piece will focus on the post “Open Door” period. The works logged here are almost exclusively written in English. When it comes to the key statistical data (see the relevant section below), the PRC Government publications have English versions. Guides on how to operate in China are intended for those who wish to invest in China as foreign entities, for whom English is the accepted language of international business. Finally, the bulk of academic articles written by foreigners (from a Chinese perspective), by members of the Chinese diaspora, or by PRC academics who wish both to have their work widely read and who wish to be seen to be producing articles of high quality, are now written in English.
General Overviews
Because of the relatively short and recent period of focus taken by this bibliographical review, it is not surprising that overviews of the topic are limited. This section introduces some academic and some more practical works.
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Article
- 1989 People's Movement
- Aesthetics
- Agricultural Technologies and Soil Sciences
- Agriculture, Origins of
- Ancestor Worship
- Anti-Japanese War
- Architecture, Chinese
- Assertive Nationalism and China's Core Interests
- Astronomy under Mongol Rule
- Book Publishing and Printing Technologies in Premodern Chi...
- Buddhism
- Buddhist Monasticism
- Buddhist Poetry of China
- Budgets and Government Revenues
- Calligraphy
- Central-Local Relations
- Ceramics
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Children’s Culture and Social Studies
- China and Africa
- China and Peacekeeping
- China and the World, 1900-1949
- China's Agricultural Regions
- China’s Soft Power
- China’s West
- Chinese Alchemy
- Chinese Communist Party Since 1949, The
- Chinese Communist Party to 1949, The
- Chinese Diaspora, The
- Chinese Nationalism
- Chinese Script, The
- Christianity in China
- Classical Confucianism
- Collective Agriculture
- Concepts of Authentication in Premodern China
- Confucius
- Confucius Institutes
- Consumer Society
- Contemporary Chinese Art Since 1976
- Corruption
- Criticism, Traditional
- Cross-Strait Relations
- Cultural Revolution
- Daoism
- Daoist Canon
- Deng Xiaoping
- Dialect Groups of the Chinese Language
- Disability Studies
- Drama (Xiqu 戏曲) Performance Arts, Traditional Chinese
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Early Imperial China
- Economic Reforms, 1978-Present
- Economy, 1895-1949
- Emergence of Modern Banks
- Energy Economics and Climate Change
- Environmental Issues in Contemporary China
- Environmental Issues in Pre-Modern China
- Establishment Intellectuals
- Ethnicity and Minority Nationalities Since 1949
- Ethnicity and the Han
- Examination System, The
- Fall of the Qing, 1840-1912, The
- Falun Gong, The
- Family Relations in Contemporary China
- Fiction and Prose, Modern Chinese
- Film, Chinese Language
- Film in Taiwan
- Financial Sector, The
- Five Classics
- Folk Religion in Contemporary China
- Folklore and Popular Culture
- Foreign Direct Investment in China
- Gardens
- Gender and Work in Contemporary China
- Gender Issues in Traditional China
- Great Leap Forward and the Famine, The
- Guanxi
- Guomindang (1912-1949)
- Han Expansion to the South
- Health Care System, The
- Heritage Management
- Heterodox Sects in Premodern China
- Historical Archaeology (Qin and Han)
- Hukou (Household Registration) System, The
- Human Origins in China
- Human Resource Management in China
- Human Rights in China
- Imperialism and China, c. 1800-1949
- Industrialism and Innovation in Republican China
- Innovation Policy in China
- Intellectual Trends in Late Imperial China
- Islam in China
- Journalism and the Press
- Judaism in China
- Labor and Labor Relations
- Landscape Painting
- Language, The Ancient Chinese
- Language Variation in China
- Late Imperial Economy, 960–1895
- Late Maoist Economic Policies
- Law in Late Imperial China
- Law, Traditional Chinese
- Legalism
- Li Bai and Du Fu
- Liang Qichao
- Literati Culture
- Literature Post-Mao, Chinese
- Literature, Pre-Ming Narrative
- Liu, Zongzhou
- Local Elites in Ming-Qing China
- Local Elites in Song-Yuan China
- Macroregions
- Management Style in "Chinese Capitalism"
- Manchukuo
- Mao Zedong
- Marketing System in Pre-Modern China, The
- Marxist Thought in China
- Material Culture
- May Fourth Movement
- Media Representation of Contemporary China, International
- Medicine, Traditional Chinese
- Medieval Economic Revolution
- Mencius
- Middle-Period China
- Migration Under Economic Reform
- Ming Dynasty
- Ming Poetry 1368–1521: Era of Archaism
- Ming Poetry 1522–1644: New Literary Traditions
- Ming-Qing Fiction
- Modern Chinese Drama
- Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature
- Mohism
- Museums
- Music in China
- Needham Question, The
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neolithic Cultures in China
- New Social Classes, 1895–1949
- One Country, Two Systems
- Opium Trade
- Orientalism, China and
- Palace Architecture in Premodern China (Ming-Qing)
- Paleography
- People’s Liberation Army (PLA), The
- Philology and Science in Imperial China
- Poetics, Chinese-Western Comparative
- Poetry, Early Medieval
- Poetry, Traditional Chinese
- Political Art and Posters
- Political Dissent
- Political Thought, Modern Chinese
- Polo, Marco
- Popular Music in the Sinophone World
- Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China
- Population Structure and Dynamics since 1949
- Porcelain Production
- Post-Collective Agriculture
- Poverty and Living Standards since 1949
- Printing and Book Culture
- Prose, Traditional
- Qi Baishi
- Qing Dynasty up to 1840
- Regional and Global Security, China and
- Religion, Ancient Chinese
- Renminbi, The
- Republican China, 1911-1949
- Revolutionary Literature under Mao
- Rural Society in Contemporary China
- School of Names
- Shanghai
- Silk Roads, The
- Sino-Hellenic Studies, Comparative Studies of Early China ...
- Sino-Japanese Relations Since 1945
- Social Welfare in China
- Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Chinese Language
- Su Shi (Su Dongpo)
- Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution
- Taiping Civil War
- Taiwanese Democracy
- Technology Transfer in China
- Television, Chinese
- Terracotta Warriors, The
- Tertiary Education in Contemporary China
- Texts in Pre-Modern East and South-East Asia, Chinese
- The Economy, 1949–1978
- The Shijing詩經 (Classic of Poetry; Book of Odes)
- Township and Village Enterprises
- Traditional Historiography
- Transnational Chinese Cinemas
- Tribute System, The
- Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports, The
- United States-China Relations, 1949-present
- Urban Change and Modernity
- Uyghurs
- Vernacular Language Movement
- Village Society in the Early Twentieth Century
- Warlords, The
- Water Management
- Women Poets and Authors in Late Imperial China
- Xi, Jinping
- Xunzi
- Yan'an and the Revolutionary Base Areas
- Yuan Dynasty
- Yuan Dynasty Poetry
- Zhu Xi