The Impact Of Investment Motivation On China’s Foreign Direct Investment

With the official signing of RCEP,the exchanges between China and RCEP member countries have become closer.At the same time,since the Chinese government officially proposed the national development strategy of "going global" in 2000,China’s outward investment flow and stock have been increasing almost every year for the past two decades.Against this backdrop,in recent years,investment cooperation between China and RCEP member countries has been continuously deepening.According to the latest "2021 Statistical Bulletin of China’s Foreign Direct Investment",China’s outward investment stock to RCEP member countries is showing an increasing trend year by year.Currently,among the 20 countries with the highest outward direct investment stock in China,RCEP member countries occupy seven seats.However,there are currently issues with China’s direct investment in RCEP member countries,such as a relatively single choice of investment regions and a concentration of investment industries in mid to low-end industries.Based on the above background,this article takes a theoretical and empirical perspective from the perspective of corporate investment motivation,constructs an investment gravity model,selects China’s OFDI flow data to RCEP member countries from 2013 to 2021 as the dependent variable,and selects some macroeconomic data from member countries as the explanatory variable,representing market seeking motivation,resource seeking motivation,and strategic asset seeking motivation,respectively,We studied the impact of different investment motivations on China’s OFDI and investigated the moderating effect of institutional distance on investment motivation by introducing the interaction term between institutional distance and various investment motivation variables.The empirical results show that China’s OFDI towards RCEP member countries has both market seeking motivation,resource seeking motivation,and strategic asset seeking motivation,but only market seeking motivation and resource seeking motivation for countries with higher per capita GDP.Institutional distance has both direct and indirect impacts on China’s OFDI.Institutional distance has a significant negative moderating effect on market seeking motivation and resource seeking motivation,while it has a significant positive moderating effect on strategic asset seeking motivation.Based on the research conclusions of this article,suggestions are proposed at the national and corporate levels respectively.