Immigration Research On The Impact Of Chinese Direct Investment In The United States

With the deepening of globalization, foreign direct investment and international migration have been accelerating flow and promoting in resource redistribution on a world-wide scale as important forms of the participation of capital and human resources in the economic globalization. Since joining the WTO in 2001, China has opened a new stage in the development of world economy, and its development of foreign direct in-vestment has particularly been noticeable. According to the data released by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the foreign direct investment flows of China was only $2.7 bil-lion in 2002, but has exceeded $100 billion by 2013, and has ranked third in the world for three years under the impetus of "Going Out" policy. In this process, the develop-ment of China's direct investment in the United States is particularly noticeable. The direct investment flows to the United States was only $65.05 million in 2003, which then achieved rapid growth after 2008 with the investment flows reaching $7.996 billion and investment stock reaching $38.011 billion in 2014, which has covered 46 states or districts by now. The United States has become the largest foreign direct investment destination for China. However, as a result of various security review and political in-tervention, or improper locational choice of direct investment, China's investment fail-ure cases often occur. It shows that Chinese enterprises'lack of comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the US investment environment.In this background, studies for China's foreign direct investment have been in-creasing aroused in the academic circles, including the investment location choice and its influencing factors becoming a hot issue. With the rise of the new institutional eco-nomics, the various factors that affect the transaction costs in the operation of enterpris-es especially the institutional ones has caused widespread concerns and discussion. Chinese traditional business culture emphasized that personal networks should be estab-lished to reduce transaction costs and the uncertainty of the market. After living abroad for many years, Chinese have a profound understanding on the local economy, culture, customs, law and politics, which become bridge between domestic and abroad, and spe-cial resource for Chinese enterprises in overseas. With the stable growth of the Chinese immigrants in the United States, the Chinese influence on the economic, cultural and political is in deepening, which has special significance to the transnational operation and location choice of Chinese enterprises, but the relevant research in this area is still rare. Therefore, it is a question worthy of our in-depth inquiry what the influence of Chinese immigrants on COFDI in the US is, and how to make full use of this kind of potential advantage to avoid the negative impacts from globalization and promote the economic development of economy of our country.At present, both at home and abroad, there are many studies about impact of immi-gration on investment, but less research are done about the impact of Chinese immi-grants on the COFDI, especially from a regional perspective within the country. This paper firstly analyzed the major countries which attract Chinese immigrants and direct investment. Then it took 50 states and the District of Columbia as the research area and analyzed the evolution process, spatial pattern and spatial coupling by using the soft-ware like Excel and Arcgis10.0 and adopting spatial distribution map and the center of gravity model based on the data about Chinese immigrants and direct investment in the US. After that, it analyzed the factors, especially immigration ones, which affect the lo-cation selection of COFDI by using the grey relational model. Finally, it discussed the American investment immigration policy, and the impact it has on the US economy and COFDI in the United States. The research conclusions are as follows:(1) Worldwide, the largest destination country for Chinese foreign direct invest-ment and immigration is the United States, followed by Australia, Canada, Japan, Sin-gapore and the UK. According to the development during the 160 years in the US, Chi-nese immigrants only clustered in the western region in early stage and has distributed in the whole country by now, but it still shows a spatial agglomeration with immigrants clustering in California, the Great Lakes region, and the eastern region of Vermont, South Carolina and so on. China's direct investment in the United States has a short time, and it mainly exists in the following areas:first, the Eastern region mainly in Massa-chusetts, Virginia, North Carolina and the Atlantic coastal areas; second, Great Lakes region mainly in New York, Michigan, Illinois; third, the Southern region mainly in Texas, Oklahoma; last, the Western region and the Pacific coastal areas mainly in Cali-fornia.(2) The gravity center of Chinese immigrants and COFDI in the United States is basically located within Kansas and Missouri. The track gravity center of Immigration and investment entry times presented on the graph respectively an "S" and a spiral line, and the track of investment intensity gravity center changed in a larger range with jumping characteristics. The regional distribution of Chinese immigrants in the United States tends to be stable, while the location choice of direct investment is still in the change. Moreover, the overlapping of gravity center of Chinese FDI and Immigrant is higher and higher, and the spatial coupling is also stronger and stronger.(3) This paper selects 8 factors that affect China's direct investment in the United States, and the analysis results show that compared with other factors, the impact of the immigration on China's direct investment in the United States is at a moderate level with a relatively stable impact. Market factors and trade relations with China are the most influential factors to China's direct investment in the United States. Chinese com-panies also tend to invest in the areas where enterprises cluster and have more Chinese immigrants. Due to the tiny regional economic differences in the United States, the im-pact of infrastructure and scientific and technological factors is weak, per capita GDP, labor costs and tax incentives are the weakest ones.(4) As the most important origin country of investment and immigration of the United States, China's investment and immigration mainly flow into the United States. Since the implementation of the investment immigration policy, the United States has attracted a large number of foreign direct investments, which has created a lot of job opportunities, and contributed great GDP and taxes for the federal government and local governments. California, New York, Florida, Texas, Maryland and Nevada are the most popular areas of investment and immigration and the top 6 states for the economic im-pact of this project at the same time.The innovations of this paper are as follows:This paper takes the immigration as one of the factors that affect China's direct investment in the United States; It discusses that Chinese immigrants influence the location choice of China's direct investment at the state level; It also analyzes investment and immigration policy in the United States from the perspective of investment.