ABSTRACT
Chinese outbound foreign direct investment (FDI1) is becoming an increasingly important phenomenon. In 2006, China’s outbound FDI totalled about US$21 billion (MOFCOM 2007a), and it is expected to rise to a tremendous US$60 billion by 2010 (MOFCOM 2007b). Chinese investors are increasingly exploring opportunities overseas in a wide range of industries (Ming and Williamson 2007). A few high-profile acquisitions such as Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s personal computer business have become widely known, but the majority of such investments have received comparatively little attention and a systematic understanding of the phenomenon is lacking.
