EU-China Foreign Direct Investment: a Double-Sided Perspective

This paper analyzes the EU-China Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) relationship, through a double-sided perspective that considers the two countries in the mutual roles of host and home economies. Although China has been traditionally identified as a low cost manufacturing location, it has recently turned out to be an important home for multinational activity. Since internationalization of Chinese companies represents a very recent chapter in the country’s long history, we first provide a brief historical overview to highlight the main steps along China open up path and clarify the role of government intervention in accelerating its global engagement. Based on recent data, we then describe the relative importance of China and the EU in the respective FDI outflows, to delineate the relevant trends, discuss the main findings, and evaluate future perspectives.