The FDI Inflow And Regional Ecnomic Growth: A Comparative Study Between Suzhou And Dalian

The effect of FDI on the economic growth of host regions has beeb one of major issues in the economic research in recent decades. Since the policy of reforming & opening-up, especially 1992, the volume of FDI into China has taken on a fast-growing trend. It is demonstrated in the comparing data of foreign capital distribution among different regions that the regions which take in more FDI develop faster, and vice versa. Which indicates that there must be some inevitable relationship between FDI and regional economic growth. Suzhou and Dalian are both developed coastal regions, also are respectively the representational cities of utilizing FDI in the Yangtze Delta and circum-Bo Hai-sea region, and their economic growth has a close relationship with the inflow of foreign capital. So undoubtedly there must be typical significance to investigate this two cities in developing regional economies in virtue of FDI. The purpose of this paper is to make a comparative study of these two cities in the relationship of FDI and economic growth. The theoretical meaning of this study lies in casting light on the discrepancy of the effect of FDI on regional economic growth, and further the diversity of the reasons for regional economic growth. Its practical importance lies in making multi-angel compare between these two typical cities on the impact of FDI towards regional economic development. So we can make clear of their similarities and differences and further come to the purpose of learning from each other.The paper gives the theoretical frame of the effects of FDI on regional economic development on the base of the summary of previous references. It mainly start from two aspects, the first is the frame of macroeconomics and the second is the frame of space economics. In the frame of macroeconomics, the key point is the effect of FDI on the supply factors including the employment of labor force, the formation of capital, the improvement of technology and so on, which is also the studying subject of the empirical study part.On the base of the analysis on the system and using the relative data of Suzhou and Dalian, the paper gives empirical study on the effects of FDI on the employment of labor power, the formation of capital, the improvement of technology and the growth of economy respectively.The result of the empirical analysis is that the effect of FDI on the employment of the labor is not obvious, while in the aspects of the effect on capital formation and technological improvement, the two cities have some differences in a certain degree, which mainly take such forms: there is a close relationship between FDI and capital formation of Suzhou, but the induced relation is not as obvious as Dalian. What's more, the promotion of FDI toward the technological improvement of Dalian is more obvious, too. So FDI has a more remarkable effect on the economic growth of Dalian.Basing on the studying above, the paper gives relative policy suggestions and holds the view that on one hand the scale of the FDI introducing should be expanded, on the other hand the quality of FDI should be emphasized and more attention should be paid to the domestic capital.