Internationalization of Chinese firms in Europe
Ying Zhang & Sergey Filippov
#2009-041
Since end of the 1990s, the world has been witnessing a phenomenon of
internationalisation of Chinese companies. This internationalisation is
often understood through FDI inflows, whereby multinational companies
establish their presence in a form of subsidiaries overseas. However,
lately many companies (and Chinese firms in particular) started to use
strategic alliances and M&As as a pair of tools of internationalisation.
Despite the growing body of literature on this topic in the context of
advanced western economies, use of strategic alliances in the
internationalisation of Chinese firms remains an under-researched topic.
In the paper we investigate the potential benefits for Chinese companies
to internationalise through strategic alliances and M&As, and
specifically in comparison to the traditional forms of outward FDI. By
using the data from Thomson SDC database, we specifically focus on the
Single European market as a new prospective location for Chinese
companies and provide a quantitative overview of Chinese firms’
alliances as well as M&As in Europe. To illustrate the optimal pattern
of internalisation of Chinese firms in Europe, we additionally use a
case study of Chinese automotive manufacturer Chery Automobile Co. Ltd.
Keywords: strategic alliances, emerging economies, China, Europe,
internationalisation
JEL: F23, M10, L62, O3
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872
