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Hot Topics for MNCs, Cool Analysis

China’s FDI Flight Fantasies and Avoiding Corresponding Follies
October 11th, 2022
The sky for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC/China) is falling per a slew of recent news articles. The evidence? A large percentage of China inward FDI (IFDI) is from Hong Kong and a notable percentage of this money is “round tripping” (i.e., money flowing from the PRC through Hong Kong and then back to the PRC).
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Businesses and the Risk of Taking Stock in the Infrastructure Alphabet Soup Game
July 6th, 2022
At the recent Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Germany, the attending countries put forth the “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment” (PGII), which is a revised version of the Build Better Back World (B3W) scheme that was launched at last year’s G-7 meeting. While there was never any concrete figure attributed to B3W, the United States (US) touted B3W would catalyze “hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment” for developing countries.
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Wong MNC Center News

Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard Interviewed for FinanceAsia story examining internal struggles at US-listed Chinese firms facing delisting risk
November 29th, 2022
On November 21, 2022, FinanceAsia published a story entitled “US-listed Chinese Firms Wracked by Infighting amid Delisting Threat” that examined the delisting threat facing more than 160 companies listed on United States (US) stock exchanges pursuant to the 2020 Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act and the unexpected responses of some companies to the threat. Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the...
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Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations orchestrates successful workshop on the effect of Chinese outward FDI in Southeast Asia
October 12th, 2022
In early October, the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center) hosted a workshop entitled “The Effects of Chinese Outward FDI in Southeast Asia” in the San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA). This 1-1/2 day workshop, organized and sponsored by the Wong MNC Center, drew leading academics, researchers, and policymakers from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. Participants presented research...
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Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard Interviewed for International Financial Law Review Story on US-China Audit Deal
September 11th, 2022
On August 29, 2022, Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations, was interviewed by International Financial Law Review (IFLR) for a story on the August agreement between the United States (US) Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) that permits, in concept, American regulatory authorities to review freely, in...
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Wong MNC Center Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard Presents Paper at “Europe in an Era of Intensifying US-China Rivalry” Workshop (Ingelheim, Germany)
August 29th, 2022
In late August, Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center), presented a paper on “The US-China Global Economic Rivalry and Europe” at the workshop on “Europe in an Era of Intensifying US-China Rivalry” (Ingelheim, Germany). In his paper, Dr. Blanchard examined United States (US)-China and Europe-China geoeconomic tensions past and present and the tactics...
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Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations Sponsors MNCs Segment of Golden State International Relations Observer Podcast
June 14th, 2022
In June 2022, the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center) became a sponsor of the portion of the Golden State International Relations Observer Podcast covering the international relations of California’s top multinational corporations (MNCs) such as Apple, Chevron, and Disney, among others. The Golden State International Relations Observer Podcast, which is listed on well-known podcast directories such as Apple...
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Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations Wins Wong Foundation Grant for Digital Silk Road research project
June 14th, 2022
In May 2022, the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center), an independent, California based non-profit think tank, won a $55,000 grant from the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Foundation to fund a multi-year, multi-country research project on China’s Digital Silk Road Initiative (DSR), part of China’s larger Belt and Road Initiative. This grant will allow Wong MNC Center Executive Director Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and...
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Wong MNC Center Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Ph.D. Presents Paper at International Studies Association Annual Meeting
April 7th, 2022
At the 2022 International Studies Association annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations, presented a paper about Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology transfer (TT) to host countries; i.e., the places where FDI takes place, focusing on developing countries. Dr. Blanchard highlighted key themes emphasized in...
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Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations orchestrates successful workshop on Chinese seaports in Europe and the Americas
December 14th, 2021
In mid-December, the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations (Wong MNC Center) hosted a workshop entitled Chinese Seaports in Europe and the Americas: Cutting through the Waves in the San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA). This 1-1/2 day workshop, also organized and sponsored by the Wong MNC Center, drew leading academics, researchers, and policymakers from Brazil, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the...
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Executive Director Jean-Marc F. Blanchard interviewed for The Diplomat article about US-China Foreign Direct Investment Dynamics
May 9th, 2021
Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Founding Executive Director of the Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations, was interviewed for an article in the The Diplomat. Dr. Blanchard offered his thoughts about the state of China-United States (US) foreign direct investment (FDI) and how various dynamics in China and the US and between the two countries might affect FDI going forward. For example, he commented on how China’s 14th Five-Year Plan,...
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Publications of Wong MNC Center Staff, Advisory Board Members, and Research Fellows

A Bargaining and Property Rights Perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative: Cases from the Italian Port System

Cristian Luise, Peter J. Buckley, Hinrich Voss, Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, and Elisa Barbieri

Drawing upon the bargaining power literature and property rights economics, this article explores how and why host country actors at different levels of governance influence foreign direct investment (FDI). Exploiting these analytical tools, it conducts a comparative case study analyzing four Chinese company attempts to enter Italian seaports. It finds there must be consistency in the distribution of rights among the various participants in the property relationship for a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) port investment to occur.

Bibliometric Review on FDI Attractiveness Factors

Vanessa P.G. Bretas, Ilan Alon, Andrea Paltrinieri and Kavilash Chawla

This article reviews the literature on the attractiveness of foreign direct investment (FDI) through bibliometric and content analysis. It combined co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and keyword co-occurrence time analysis with content analysis of the most cited articles by using the Bibliometrix R-package and VOSviewer software. A study of 499 articles extracted from the Web of Science database reveals five main research categories: FDI structure, market conditions, entry conditions, institutional framework, and resource availability.

Wong MNC Center Publications & Sponsored Publications

China’s Maritime Silk Road and Small States: Lessons from the Case of Djibouti

David Styan

This article sheds light on the factors shaping China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) in small states through a study of Djibouti and the MSRI. It also analyses the establishment of China’s first overseas military base and thus evaluates the military-security implications of Chinese MSRI ports.

Domestic Politics as Fuel for China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative: The Case of the Gulf Monarchies

Jonathan Fulton

China’s involvement with the Gulf monarchies has been built upon an economic foundation. With the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) this has expanded, as the Gulf monarchies see cooperation with China through MSRI projects as a means of advancing economic development programs necessary to move beyond single-resource rentier economies and relationships with external powers as a means of ensuring their security in an unstable region.

Data Snapshots, Rankings, and Indexes

Click to enlarge displayed image

Japan and Korea long have been Vietnam's dominant FDI sources
Japanese FDI Flows to Southeast Asian Countries Not Reaching Old Highs
China-Japan FDI flows seem little correlated with other economic flows

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Upcoming Events

Dec
15
2022 Asia-Pacific Conference on Economics & Finance (Singapore, Hybrid)

The 2022 Asia-Pacific Conference on Economics and Finance (APEF 2022) will address a multitude of economic and finance related themes including business ethics,...

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