Research On The Spatial Distribution And Evolution Of Social Service FDI In China

Along with the service economy era, the service industry is gradually moving towardinternationalization and diversification. Multinational investment does not only enter into the"efficiency industry" such as producer services, but also penetrates into the "livelihood relatedfield" like social services, and plays a positive role on upgrading to high-end industry andregional development. This paper, taking foreign direct investment (FDI) of social services asresearch object, reveals the status quo of social service development in our country from theaspect of scale, structure, and foreign development of the industry, and systematically analyzesthe spatial pattern and evolution characteristics of China’s social service FDI in recent yearsthrough exploratory spatial data analytical method. The study found that the economic featuresof China’s social service is that volume of enterprises and employment is large, foreigninvestment in the industry is emerging and growing, and the foreign capital obviouslyconcentrated in a few of sub-industries.Analysis on the spatial pattern indicates that:(1) China’s social services FDI generallysubjects to the distribution feature of decreasing from east to west, but is not exactly followingup the degree of economic development, the distribution is more dispersed than common serviceindustry FDI and inner industry distribution is quite different;(2) more social service FDI isconcentrated in Yangtze River basin and coastal provinces. The number of high FDI value areaand industrial average FDI has increased, the eastern provinces is the main power driving FDIgrowth of the industry.(3) Distribution of China’s social services FDI is between low levelagglomeration and discrete pattern. In overall, it showed positive spatial autocorrelation, withagglomeration rising trend; Locally, regional hot spots originated from provinces in the MiddleEast, the Yangtze River Delta, and around the Bohai Sea, then gradually spread to neighboringprovinces; the disparity between the hot and cold spots regions is increasing.(4) Distributiondifferences between the eastern and western provinces shows a rising trend, reflecting thenon-balanced development trend, while the development level of social service FDI in centralprovinces is close to balance, western area is the principal ingredient compositing thedistribution difference between areas.The research combined with analysis of the correlation coefficient, trying to explore the influencing factors of social services FDI’s location from three aspects of economy, policy andother factors and put forward that: the scale of economic development, service industrydevelopment, export-oriented economy, the business environment is the main economic factorsconstituting agglomeration of social service industry; easiness of industry access or degree ofpolicy openness is the key factor affecting location choice of social service industry in the earlystages of FDI development; the industry property and innovation ability of enterprise separatelyaffect the FDI distribution and capital accumulation ability within industry. Based on aboveanalysis, this paper further makes judgment to the development trend of social service FDI, inattempt to provide reference for the government to formulate relevant policies to improve socialservices openness; and provide advice for improving social service level and optimizing theservice industry structure of our country.