A fresh view of China’s OFDI, its motivations and risks thereto

The aims of this paper are: to examine the key reasons for the locations of and the reasons for China’s OFDI as it boomed and became a major OFDI player in the global economy; and, to assess the existence and nature of possible risks to such a boom continuing. The core of the paper, in its second section, is a time-indexed review of findings relating to the first theme noted above. The broad conclusions are that: China’s OFDI has been a great success in the period 2005–2019; its motivations have included all the usual possibilities, such as access to resources, market access, access to and reverse engineering of technology (very broadly construed), and access to cheap labour for manufacturing; but, it has also sought to wield political influence via infrastructural investment, and its increasingly hostile attitudes in geopolitical terms in the past decade may pose consequential threats to a continuation of the success to date.