Investigating Geo-Economic Implications Of Chinese FDI Firms In Gulf Cooperation Council States

This research dedicated to analyze the Geo-economic implications of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) enterprises in six Arab countries in the West of Asia known as states of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The research demonstrates the uses of geographical information system (GIS) to conductspatial analysis designated to investigate Chinese firms' location choice and delineate aspects and trends of their spatial distribution. The research analysis framework integrates spatial analysis and FDI theories to examine the spatially relevant determinants of FDI and highlight their effect on the current location choice of Chinese companies. The research adopts a comprehensive model to examine the potential implications that influence the firm's decision to flow to GCC as a region and to a certain country in particular. Therefore, spatial and nonspatial factors combined as the two primary directions that the research covers during the analysis phase. The ramifications of "One Belt, One Road” initiative, and bilateral trade between China and GCC states have incorporated to the core outline of the research to weight nonspatial factors and ensure the inclusiveness of the research standpoint. Thus projects of One Belt and One Road have demonstrated and scrutinized while bilateral trade has modeled and visualized.Besides that, the location advantages of GCC as a region and state level articulated including factors of natural resources and economic attributes.The substantial research objectives determined to specify where are the Chinese Outward FDI firms locate in GCC region, why they locate in a certain state in particular rather than another one and what trends associated with Chinese firms location choice in the region in general. The primary data retrieved from the public directory of overseas listed companies records of Ministry of Commerce, Contact Office of Chinese Companies in GCC, and Chinese firms' websites. The firms' data included point locations referenced as longitude-latitude coordinates which have gathered in individual basis for every firm. The collected data also includes firms' industry as this factor has important associations with firms' motivation in general and location choice in particular. Secondary data collected from China's Ministry of Commerce,Investment Project Information Database, Statistical Bulletin of China's Outward FDI. Other sources include GCC governments official publications and reports, UNCTAD, World Bank, OCED, the Heritage Foundation, previous scientific articles, overseas Chinese firms, specialized think tanks and strategies studies centers. The research comes as the first study that addresses location choice and spatial distribution of Chinese firms in GCC region and among the leading efforts that examine implications of One Belt, One Road and bilateral trade in spatial behavior of Chines enterprises in the GCC region. The research has organized into six chapters. Chapter one presents a detailed background of Sino-GCC States economic relationship and Chinese OFDI in addition to the reseach objectives and literature review. The research significance and structure embedded in this chapter as well. Chapter two outlines the data collection and methods of the research. Chapter three dedicated for the spatial analysis framework. Chapter four investigates the FDI geo-economic factors. Chapter five offers the concluding remarks while the last chapter lists the references that have been used while writing the research.The research employed Geographic Information System (GIS) to process and analyze the comprehensive and multi-scalar dataset of the Chinese firms. Spatial analyst tools including exploratory spatial data analysis, density analysis, Moran's I index have used to highlight the firms' location patterns and identify spatial autocorrelation of the FDI companies with other factors and determinants. Spatial econometric theory of FDI has incorporated to the model of the research. Natural resources-seeking,market-seeking, efficiency-seeking and strategic assets-seeking incentives that influence firms' location choice embedded in the analysis model.The research found out that the Chinese FDI firms are mainly concentrated in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Yet, United Arab Emirates is considerably ahead of Saudi Arabia while the rest of the four Gulf countries share insignificant number of the Chinese FDI firms. The agglomeration of the Chinese FDI firms is mainly in Dubai and Riyadh. The analysis reveals that bilateral trade, natural resource endowment, economy size, Free Economic Zones (FEZ) are fundamental determinants of the FDI location in GCC region. Even so, the impact of determinants varied relatively from state to another as they differ in the influence as well. Bilateral trade, investment climate and proximity to region markets are the key influential determinants in the influx of Chinese FDI investment to the United Arab Emirates while size of the economy and investment opportunities associated with construction, services, and energy sector are a pioneer factors in Chinese firms' inflows to Saudi Arabia.