Location, Resources and Technology of China’s OFDI

China has been acknowledged as an important recipient of inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) since the ‘open-door’ policy was launched in 1979. However, the rapid integration of China into the world economy has also led it to become a major source of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI).1 China’s OFDI developed from a very limited scale and has surged over the last decade. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the launch of the ‘Go Global’ strategy in 2002 greatly shifted the landscape of China’s OFDI (Voss et al., 2009). UNCTAD (2010a) reported that China will be the second most promising OFDI source country in the next three years. Indeed, it became the largest source country of FDI among all the developing countries and one of the five largest foreign investors in the world in 2009, accounting for 5.1 per cent of the world’s total FDI outflows (MOC, 2009). Figure 5.1 presents this surge. China’s OFDI flow rose dramatically from $913 million in 1991, to $56.5 billion in 2009, and to $76 billion in 2012. China’s OFDI stock grew from $5.4 billion in 1991 to $245.8 billion in 2009.