The Internationalization Strategy of New Chinese Multinationals: Determinants and Evolution

摘要

Over the past two decades, Chinese multinationals have made a huge amount of foreign direct investments abroad, making China the largest outward investor among top ten emerging countries. The peculiarities of Chinese investment are that they are directed both towards other developing countries and towards advanced economies and that they regard both lower end industries and higher-value adding activities. This remarkable development of Chinese companies cannot be explained adopting the traditional internationalization theories based on the concept of ownership advantage. In fact, some Chinese companies are smaller and lacking in resources when compared to their foreign competitors and the Chinese context has particular characteristics which can increase the difficulties for the local firms to compete in the world market. According to this, the aim of this paper is to describe the determinants that induce Chinese companies to realize FDI and the characteristics that distinguish their internationalization strategy from those adopted by developed countries multinationals.