Foreign Manufacturing Multinationals and the Transformation of the Chinese Economy: New Measurements, New Perspectives

Theodore Moran

No WP11-11, Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: What is the relationship between foreign manufacturing multinational corporations (MNCs) and the expansion of indigenous technological and managerial technological capabilities among Chinese firms? China has been remarkably successful in designing industrial policies, joint venture requirements, and technology transfer pressures to use FDI to create indigenous national champions in a handful of prominent sectors: high speed rail transport, information technology, auto assembly, and an emerging civil aviation sector. But what is striking in the aggregate data is how relatively thin the layer of horizontal and vertical spillovers from foreign manufacturing multinationals to indigenous Chinese firms has proven to be. Despite the large size of manufacturing FDI inflows, the impact of multinational corporate investment in China has been largely confined to building plants that incorporate capital, technology, and managerial expertise controlled by the foreigner. As the skill-intensity of exports increases, the percentage of the value of the final product that derives from imported components rises sharply. China has remained a low value-added assembler of more sophisticated inputs imported from abroad--a “workbench” economy. Where do the gains from FDI in China end up? While manufacturing MNCs may build plants in China, the largest impact from deployment of worldwide earnings is to bolster production, employment, R&D, and local purchases in their home markets. For the United States the most recent data show that US-headquartered MNCs have 70 percent of their operations, make 89 percent of their purchases, spend 87 percent of their R&D dollars, and locate more than half of their workforce within the US economy--this is where most of the earnings from FDI in China are delivered.

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; International Investment; China; Multinational Corporations; Exports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F21 F23 F52 L32 L52 L60 L62 L63 L64 O10 O14 O25 O30 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-int and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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