| Foreign direct investment (FDI) is the most important form of the utilization of foreign capital for China. However, large-scale FDI appeared to differ significantly across provinces, and such a difference may have affected labor movement in China. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors of influencing the inter-provincial migration, focusing on the impact of FDI in the long term.Based on the analysis on the mechanism of the role of FDI in the migration, we study the distribution difference for FDI from 1990 to 2004. It appears that FDI is mainly concentrated in eastern China but much less in western and the middle regions. Inter-provincial migration is also mainly toward coastal provinces. More specifically, Guangdong alone accounted for almost one third of the total inter-provincial in-migration. The central and western provinces, especially the central region, have a large number of out-migration but very small in-migration. So we could see that there are geographical selection convergences for FDI in China and the inter-provincial migration. Based on China Census data from 1990 to 2005, this study applies the logit type model to investigate the effect of FDI and other factors, such as the unemployment, income, migration stock, distance, etc., on inter-provincial migration in China. The model results show that the provinces with high FDI affected migration positively in the early 1990s. While in the late 1990s, this effect was weakened, it was enhanced again in the early 21st century. The other factors mostly have expected impact on the urban migration and the rural migration. Policy implications based on the empirical results are discussed at the end of the study. |
