The Competitiveness of Attracting Creative FDI, Compared with Financial and Manufacturing FDI

During the last decades, the process of economic globalization and integration has been further accelerated. Driven by this trend, production factors actively circulate between cities, producing enormous transfers of international capital. As the main component of the capital transfers, foreign direct investment plays an increasingly important role in strengthening economic ties between cities. FDI could affect the city’s performance through multiple channels to promote economic growth, improve living standard and eventually enhance the city’s comprehensive competitiveness. Systematically summarizing previous experience and intensively analysing the impact mechanism will have enormous significance in the utilization of foreign investment. Numerous theories have analysed the mechanism of FDI and the location factors. However, the mainstream research focused on the all over industries (e.g. Alderson and Beckfield, 2004), or only the advanced producer services (e.g. Taylor, Catalano, et al., 2002). By comparing the specific influence factors of FDI within three types of industrial sectors can assist the politicians and businessmen to develop specific and feasible proposals. In particular, comparison can promote the city competitiveness in the emerging creative industries. In addition, the convenience of transportation and communication has shortened the distance between cities enabling cities to interact effectively and develop collaboratively. Previous researches put excessive emphasis on the hierarchy of cities by simply processing the cities’ attribute data, while ignoring their power and positions in the world city system (Alderson and Beckfield, 2004). This study investigated the structure of FDI network and explored whether the position and power could impact the FDI attraction. The research used negative binominal model and the outcome testified that for the three types of industries in different development stages, the determinants of FDI are similar to a certain extent. However, results also verify the research hypothesis that even with the same motives, different industrial sectors have different strategies of FDI attraction. Among them, the creative industrial investment indeed demands significantly for cultural facilities. By borrowing techniques from social network analysis (Irwin & Hughes, 1992), this study compared the network characteristics of creative, financial and manufacturing FDI. In order to further explain the importance of the city interaction, also the network attribute index were introduced (Ni, 2012). Regression results show that the network attribute have a significant effect on FDI attraction. Networks with various structure impact their actors differently. Aside from scientific relevance, this study offered policy recommendations on how to draw investors’ attention. It is suggested that cities need to be more specific in FDI attraction strategies to avoid investments that overlapping or beyond the ability. Furthermore, the study offered suggestions on choosing preferred partners. Meanwhile, this study provided specific advices based on the cities’ status as being core cities or not.