Japanese Direct Investment In Zhejiang

Japanese direct investment makes up an important FDI in Zhejiang. Since China joined WTO, many multinational corporations readjusted their strategies of investment and management to incorporate China into their global business network, especially those from Japan. To seize the opportunity brought by the Japanese FDI in a new environment and speed up the economic development in Zhejiang, it is very necessary to research into the FDI in Zhejiang by Japan.Based on the reason mentioned above, the article probes into the investment motives, investment strategies and regional preferences through general as well as representative analyses of Japanese FDI in Zhejiang.The article consists of four parts. The first part presents a general view of Japanese FDI in Zhejiang based on the official statistics form Japan and China, with the help of Eview statistical software. The major conclusions in this part are Japanese FDI in Zhejiang experienced 3 stages. There is a big gap between the Japanese capital in Zhejiang and other areas like Jiangsu and Shanghai. The high percentage of FDI capital in place is a huge impetus for the development of economy in Zhejiang. The province leaves considerable potential to be tapped. The second part sorts out all kinds of statistical data concerning the FDI of large Japanese corporations in Zhejiang, and looks into the motives and entrance strategies of these Japanese corporations in relation with related theories and cases. It comes to the conclusions that Japanese enterprises entered Zhejiang in various styles: the fleet style, trilogy style, grouping style and follow-up style. And there are variations in accordance with types of stage, trade and region in their investment motives. The third part uses the FDI of large Japanese corporations in Zhejiang as a typical example and examines the evolution of the Japanese investment strategies in Zhejiang on the basis of related theories. It comes to the conclusions that the Japanese investment strategies in Zhejiang have undergone processes form joint venture to exclusive ownership, single projects to industrial chains and individual investments to industrial clusters. Hangzhou and Ningbo received most of the capital, and the investments in Jiaxing are on the rise in spite of its late start. Under the new circumstance, Japan sticks to the intangible properties as the starting point of their competition, and Zhejiang occupies a lower end of the value chain in new Japanese strategies. The fourth part applies "Radar Model" and related research findings to the reports on the investment environment of China by Japan, and conducts a comparative analysis of the investment environment in Zhejiang and other areas like Jiangsu and Shanghai, so as to find out the advantages and disadvantages of Zhejiang in terms of regional preference. It comes to the conclusions that there exists causal relationship between investment environment and regional preference. The gaps between the amount of capitals attracted by Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu are largely due to the gaps in their investment environments.