Research On Spatial Characters Of MNCs' R&D Facilities In Automobile Industry In China

R&D, as one of the most important part for innovation, is the vital source for the multinational companies to win in the global competition. The automobile industry is important for the economic development of China. And it's been grown in a fast speed and takes a large part of China's GDP. China is a big automobile market. As a lagging industry in China, automobile industry attracts foreign investment, especially from the multinational companies. R&D is crucial to automobile industry and pushes its upgrade. As the high-end function of technique, R&D facilities of automobile industry are moving to China, with the increasing investment in manufacturing of automobile. It becomes a obvious phenomenon and trend, which attracts our attention.Firstly, there's an analysis of the development characters of global automobile industry nowadays. After a brief introduction of the content and mode of R&D of automobile industry, there's a conclusion of the development characters of R&D activities in automobile industry. Having learning the background of the industry, this paper focuses on development of multinational companies in China and gets a general idea for the R&D facilities of these multinational companies. The main part of this paper is to analyze the spatial characters of R&D facilities of multinational companies in China and the factors which influence the location of R&D facilities. At last, this paper supplies some suggestions on how to improve innovation in automobile industry and enhance the competitive power of China's automobile products.