The Reginal Differences in Attracting FDI and the Changing Influences of FDI Determinants: A Study on China

Academic research on the determinants of foreign direct investment in China is abundant. However, recent research on this topic is relatively few, and previous studies have neglected the significant economic and social differences among Chinese regions. Thus, the purposes of this study are exploring the regional differences in attracting FDI and investigating whether the determinants of FDI are of varying importance in different periods. I divide the Chinese provinces into the East, Middle and West based on research traditions and partition the selected period into three sub-periods. According to the regression results, the determinants of FDI vary in different regions and are of shifting influences overtime.