Implication of China’s Ambitious European Investment Plan for Nordic Energy and Cleantech Sector

Abstract China's outward direct investment in Europe has experienced a significant surge over the last decade. Since 2015, the launch of new Eurasian investment flagship initiative One Belt One Road and the establishment of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have given strong political and financial push for growing energy and infrastructure investment interest from China to Europe. Considering China's role in global economy and global challenges such as fight the climate change, it has become critical to understand that what are the implications of the new wave of Chinese direct investments in Europe, especially in the Nordic clean energy and technology sector? How are these investments perceived by European and Finnish business community? Most of the existing studies in this research context have focused on Western and Eastern Europe market. Very limited number of studies have focused on Nordic region and energy sector. This thesis has filled this research gap. Gioia method of grounded theory was applied to process data from archives and interview sources. The data of this research is extensively collected from 29 investment-related archival sources and 8 interviews with 8 representatives from Finnish energy sector. Grounded theory coding based on data has been carried out. The main findings are followings; This research has analyzed the real case of Chinese investment in Finnish cleantech sector from company’s culture governance perspective. In addition, mapping of Finnish cleantech innovative offerings that with the potential of attracting Chinese investment has been carried out. The findings also provide commercial interpretation to Finnish private sector what are the drivers of Chinese investment. For policymakers in China, the perception of Chinese investment in Nordic countries has been summarized. Both government and private sector could find relevant findings from this thesis