A Contextual View of Chinese Enterprise Internationalization

The early years of the twenty-first century have ushered in a range of far-reaching milestones for both the Chinese and world economies. First, China’s process of (re)integration with the global economy (Lardy, 2002) culminated in the accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Combined with sustained economic reform and restructuring efforts in the domestic political economy sphere, China’s race to the market (Story, 2003) has induced a gradual, yet irreversible, convergence towards internationally accepted norms and standards of economic interaction and increasingly market-conforming business strategies. A second critical development, meanwhile, has been China’s emergence as a source of foreign direct investment (FDI), alongside its continuing attractiveness as a leading destination of global FDI (Cai, 1999; Deng, 2004; Wu & Chen, 2001). Spearheading the still comparatively small but rapidly expanding outward FDI wave are increasingly assertive Chinese enterprises with global ambitions. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.