중국의 해외직접투자(OFDI)가 국가 이미지를 향상 시키는가?

Abstract

Building the national image is the core of building China's soft power. This paper used the survey data of the PEW Research Center as the data for evaluating China's national image, and used the foreign direct investment (OFDI) data from 2009 to 2019 to empirically analyze the relationship between OFDI and the improvement of China's national image and the mechanism by which OFDI affects the national image. The research results show that OFDI plays an important role in promoting the improvement of China's national image, and the robustness test further verified related conclusions. In the mechanism verification, it was found that OFDI contributes to promoting the improvement of China's national image through the promotion effect of economic and social development, the effect of social responsibility, and the improvement of public opinion. According to additional analysis, OFDI's effects on improving the national image include ‘heterogeneous investment motivation’, ‘investment stage’, and ‘investment contracts and political affinity’, and ‘time effect’ and ‘distance effect’ on improving the national image. The research results of this paper are expected to contribute to providing the basis for standards and decision-making for building and improving China's national image, and to make a policy contribution to improving China's external image and deadlocked Korea-China relations.