Internationalization of Chinese firms in Europe

Ying ZHANG and Sergey Filippov ()

No 41, UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series from United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology

Abstract: Since end of the 1990s, the world has been witnessing a phenomenon of internationalisation of Chinese companies. This internationalisation is often understood through FDI inflows, whereby multinational companies establish their presence in a form of subsidiaries overseas. However, lately many companies (and Chinese firms in particular) started to use strategic alliances and M&As as a pair of tools of internationalisation. Despite the growing body of literature on this topic in the context of advanced western economies, use of strategic alliances in the internationalisation of Chinese firms remains an under-researched topic. In the paper we investigate the potential benefits for Chinese companies to internationalise through strategic alliances and M&As, and specifically in comparison to the traditional forms of outward FDI. By using the data from Thomson SDC database, we specifically focus on the Single European market as a new prospective location for Chinese companies and provide a quantitative overview of Chinese firms' alliances as well as M&As in Europe. To illustrate the optimal pattern of internalisation of Chinese firms in Europe, we additionally use a case study of Chinese automotive manufacturer Chery Automobile Co. Ltd.

Keywords: strategic alliances; emerging economies; China; Europe; internationalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 M10 L62 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eec, nep-sbm and nep-tra
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dgr:unumer:2009041

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