The impact of inward foreign direct investment on the nature and intensity of Chinese manufacturing exports

The contribution of transnational corporations (TNCs) to exports from developing countries has long been a point of debate. Host countries often complain that TNCs export too little, and the findings in some studies support these arguments. For example, Lall and Mohammad (1983) found that TNCs performed rather poorly in generating exports from India. However, other empirical studies have suggested the opposite, showing that inward foreign direct investment (FDI) was export-oriented and raised the level of exports from host economies (O’Sullivan, 1993; Blake and Pain, 1994; Cabrai, 1995). Research on the role of inward FDI in improving Chinese export performance has been a more recent addition to the literature. Many studies found evidence of a generally positive and significant role for inward FDI in promoting the expansion of Chinese exports (Buckley, Clegg and Wang, 2002; Sun, 1999, 2001; Zhang and Song, 2000).