A New Perspective On China’s Outward FDI: Unique Characteristics Of China’s Economic Development Phase

Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has always been a topic of interest for economic researchers. Compared with vast amounts of discussion available about FDI in general and FDI flows into China, discussion about China’s OFDI has been scarce. The scarcity was most likely due to a lack of research interest in China’s almost non-existent OFDI scale. This started to change going into the 21st centurywith China’s world stage debut and subsequent growth momentum dubbed by some as the "Chinese Momentum". Now as China is drastically increasing its OFDI scale, researchers are flurrying to keep up.As the largest "发展国家" nation, China’s OFDI activities have unique characteristics compared with other countries. These characteristics are rooted in China’s demographics and economic development. This paper attempts to incorporate these special characteristics in analyzing host country factors that attract China’s OFDI and China’s own factors that work to "push" FDI outwards.