Is FDI a high-quality investment? evidence from the changes in the Chinese FDI after HSR opening

Abstract

ABSTRACT Improving the quality of foreign direct investment (FDI) is of great importance for the Chinese economy, which has transited from high-speed growth to high-quality development. Under the background of the rapid construction of high-speed rail (HSR), this paper uses panel data from 288 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2017 and implements the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the effect of the HSR opening on FDI. This study also infers the quality of FDI before HSR opening and tests whether HSR opening could improve the quality of FDI. The empirical results show that in the short period after the HSR opening, the crowding out low-quality investment caused by the opening of HSR is greater than the effect of attracting high-quality investment. Therefore, FDI decreases after the opening of HSR, indicating the FDI before HSR opening is a low-quality investment. Moreover, the opening of HSR could gradually improve the quality of FDI over time, promoting FDI to transition to a neutral investment, then to a high-quality investment. Our research suggests that the Chinese government should choose FDI with adequate evaluation, introducing the high-quality FDI to generate technology spillovers and promote the industrial upgrades.