This Unctad study will focus on investigating the home province determinants of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and the motives of provincial firms by employing data on provincial OFDI flows for the period 2003–2012 published by the Ministry of Commerce of China.

Although the data of provincial OFDI flows include OFDI conducted by local State-owned enterprises (SOEs), majority of provincial OFDI flows are conducted by non-SOEs. In this study, we use the term “provincial firms” to distinguish them from central government-controlled SOEs.