A Study On The Relationship Between Intellectual Property Protection And Foreign Direct Investment In China

Intellectual property rights protection issue has been getting heated. For each country’s economy, whether or not intellectual property policies can promote economic growth and foreign direct investment is its primary concern. This article investigates how the intellectual property rights protection affects promoting foreign direct investment by theoretical and empirical analysis.First, in theoretical analysis, several theories of FDI main cause factors are used to investigate how intellectual property policies have impacts to promoting FDI. Transfer theories of knowledge and technology are used to investigate how intellectual property protection policies interrupt technology transfer or protect own country’s technology.Second, from empirical perspective, this article utilizes multiple data to confirm theoretical conclusion. Each test divided by time periods, zones and industries shows that intellectual property protection policies in different zone, in different time period and on different industry have different influence on promoting FDI.Generally, strong IP policies have high impacts on promoting foreign direct investment in coastal area and in manufacturing industry on which foreign direct investment are converged. On the contrary, in the interior area, strengthening intellectual property policy inhibits promoting FDI.