The Performance of Foreign Direct Investment in China: A preliminary analysis

China has recently become one of the major rec1p1ent countries of foreign direct investment (FDI). This phenomenal development has attracted the attention of many researchers who are interested in the impact of FDI on economic growth. In particular, researchers have focused on examining the contribution of foreign direct investment of GDP growth. Within the new growth framework, this paper attempts to investigate the performance of foreign direct investment, i.e. how efficient China has utilised FDI as one of the factor inputs in the economy. An input-oriented distance function approach is employed to estimate the technical efficiency of FDI in China's coastal regions over the period of 1983-95. 1 Work on this paper was supported by a small grant from !he Australian Research Council.