China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment : A Country-level Empirical Analysis of OECD Country Determinants between 2003 and 2010

This thesis combines the gravity model with Dunning’s four motivations and three control variables for Chinese outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI), and provides an empirical country level analysis on the determinants of Chinese OFDI in 34 OECD countries from 2003 to 2010. I find that resource-seeking motivation is a determinant of Chinese OFDI; the market-seeking motive is shown insignificant influence on Chinese OFDI; the strategic asset-seeking motivation of Chinese OFDI is not supported due to its unexpected negative sign. Moreover, the efficiency seeking motivation was not considered in previous studies due to low labor cost in China. In this thesis, by using real labor cost as a proxy, I prove that Chinese OFDI is not driven by efficiency seeking motive