Research On The Interactive Effects Of China's Direct Investment In NAFTA Countries And The Investment Environment

Under the background of increasing economic globalization,China Outward Foreign Direct Investment(COFDI)is also expanding.Among these regions,various regional integration organizations have attracted the attention of many Chinese companies due to their advantages in market access,and the North American Free Trade Area(NAFTA)is one of them.In this region,both developed and developing countries coexist,and the two economies enjoy the same benefits from the free trade zone and different resource endowments.Therefore,when investing in the region,China needs to comprehensively compare the investment environment of the member states of the Free Trade Zone and formulate the optimal investment plan to obtain greater benefits.However,most of the current research on COFDI in the region is to study a single country separately,and there is less horizontal comparison between countries in the NAFTA.And the research perspective also focuses on discussion of the investment environment of host country or China’s investment situation in the country.There is little research on the comprehensive analysis from the perspective of the combination of the two.Based on this condition,this paper takes the NAFTA as the research object,firstly,calculating the investment status score to reflect the condition of COFDI of three countries from 2003-2017.Secondly,from the perspectives of politics,economy,society,resources and technology,18 indicators are selected by entropy weight method and coefficient of variation method to weight the calculation of the investment environment scores of the three countries which fully reflect the investment environment.Thirdly,the investment status score and the investment environment score are used as subsystems,and the interaction coordination effect and the evolution law of the time-space change are discussed by means of the coupling coordination model.Fourth,the use of Geo-detector model to determine the driving mechanism of the various elements of the investment environment for COFDI.Finally,combined with the investment environment of the three countries,it proposes the location and industry selection proposals for China’s future investment in NAFTA,with a view to providing policy reference for China’s further investment in the region.The study mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)In the 15 years from 2003 to 2017,China’s assessment of the investment status of the three member states of the NAFTA has not changed much over the years,but the spatial differences between the three countries are significant.The US investment status score is significantly higher than that of Canada and Mexico,while Canada is slightly better than Mexico.As far as the investment status rating is concerned,the United States has been above good for years,Canada is between poor and acceptable,and Mexico is fluctuating between poor and very poor.Therefore,China’s investment in the region is not fit except for the United States.(2)Canada has the best investment environment,United States is the second,and Mexico is behind.The investment environment scores of the three countries have changed little with time.The investment environment of the United States and Canada has been upgraded to medium in the past 15 years and has remained stable.Mexico is very different from the United States and Canada.The investment environment has been around for a long time,and the investment environment needs to be improved.(3)The degree of coupling between the US COFDI and the investment environment has experienced a high-medium-high evolution,and the correlation between the two is strong.And the level of coordination is high,and the two develop in the same direction.That means there is a relatively obvious interaction between the US COFDI status and the investment environment,and the two have evolved in a coordinated manner.However,the development of the investment environment lags behind COFDI slightly.The investment environment has a faster response to COFDI,so it has experienced an investment environment lag-type to COFDI lag type conversion,but the investment environment drives COFDI development speed is relatively slow.There is a certain correlation between COFDI and investment environment in Canada,but the association is not close.,and there is some fluctuation.The coordination situation is primary.On the whole,the interaction between COFDI and the investment environment in Canada has already appeared,but it is still not stable.In the future,it is necessary to gradually achieve synergy through guidance.And COFDI lags behind the investment environment in Canada,but the investment environment has little and a certain lag period influence on COFDI.China’s coupling between Mexico’s investment situation and investment environment is extremely unstable,and the degree of coordination is generally primary.So far,the degree of synergy between the two is not clear.That means the interaction between COFDI and the investment environment in Mexico is still unclear,and it needs further exploration in the future.(4)Factor detection results in Geo-detector found that the factors such as per capita GDP growth rate and terminal throughput have no significant impact on COFDI.Six factors,such as population,R&D expenditure,and international competitiveness,have a strong driving effect on COFDI.The inflation rate and the proportion of fuel exports to total exports are weaker for COFDI.The results of interactive detection show that the driving intensity of COFDI is significantly enhanced with factors interaction,but the enhancement effect is different.When the population and R&D expenditure account for the GDP ratio,the enhancement effect is most obvious.The driving effect on COFDI has been significantly improved.When fuel exports account for the total export ratio and inflation rate,the COFDI drive strength increases less than other factors.This article is expected to innovate in two points,one of which is to study the NAFTA as a whole area.When studying the COFDI and investment environment in the NAFTA,the predecessors mostly used the United States as the research object,Canada and Mexico were less involved,and the comparative studies in the three countries were also scarce.This paper evaluates the current investment situation by comparing the three countries’ COFDI status and their own investment environment.The second is the expansion of research methods.Most studies have separately analyzed the investment environment of host country or China’s investment status,and there are few discussions about the interaction effects and specific driving mechanisms between the two.This paper intends to explore the interaction between COFDI and investment environment through qualitative and quantitative analysis methods,and propose feasibility for further investment.In addition,the following shortcomings exist in this paper.The first,in order to seek a comprehensive evaluation method to evaluate investment status in the home country and investment in the host country,the indicators selection and spatial analysis of the COFDI status and investment environment of the NAFTA need to be further improved.Second,the interaction in the US and Canada are more pronounced,and Mexico’s effect is still untenable.How to use better means to analyze the response relationship between COFDI and investment environment in Mexico?It needs to be further explored.