Earticle

This study explores how China’s regulative, normative, and cognitive institutional constraints and support affect its firms’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) strategies at the subnational level. Our model assumes that the main motivation for firms’ OFDI is to escape the home country’s institutional constraints. Moreover, the institutional support of the home country’s government works as a moderator that accelerates the speed at which firms escape. We collected 26,411 firm-year observations, including 7,098 FDIs conducted by 2,401 firms between 2007 and 2017. The logit and panel regression analysis methods measure the effect of institutional constraints and support on Chinese firms’ OFDI. The results show that institutional constraints positively affect Chinese OFDI, confirming that the higher the institutional constraints in China are, the more likely it is that the firm will escape, and as the constraints increase, the faster they will do so. The institutional support for domestic development has positive effects on Chinese OFDI, which is contrary to expectation, while institutional support for internationalization has a positive effect on Chinese OFDI. Additionally, institutional support for domestic development and internationalization positively moderate the relationship between institutional constraints and the speed and number of OFDIs. This study analyzes the concept of “escape OFDI” empirically by examining the effects of subnational institutional constraints on OFDI activities at the firm level. This study advances the understanding of the motivations for OFDI activities by recognizing the existence of both institutional constraints and support in shaping the internationalization strategies of firms from developing countries, thus addressing an important gap in this field. Furthermore, it is a novel attempt to examine the impact of these two kinds of support on firms’ OFDI, which provides a new lens for understanding the internationalization of firms from developing countries.

T?his study aims to investigate the factors influencing the lack of criticism from democratic governments towards China’s handling of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Democratic governments exhibited varied reactions to China’s stringent measures against democratic movements in Hong Kong in the year 2019. Nevertheless, existing research on the protests in Hong Kong has yet to explore the factors influencing the diverse responses of democratic governments towards Chinese policies related to the protests in Hong Kong. Empirical findings from data on government responses to China’s protest policy, gathered from the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe (2020) and the Diplomat (Tiezzi, 2020), indicate that lower level of democracy and ethnic and civil conflict dynamics hinder democratic countries from expressing dissenting views on Chinese policies.

경제특구를 만드는 국가적인 이유는 다음과 같다. 국제경쟁차원에서 한 나라의 경제성장을 위해서는 분명한 인센티브가 국제자본에게 제공되어야 하고 여기에는 사회적 차원의 인센티브로 노동기준이 포함되고 있다. 물론 최악의 형태의 노동기준 침해는 경제특구에서도 배제되는 경우가 많으나 여전히 노동기준상의 할인요구는 직접적 또는 간접적으로 많이 나타나고 있다. 반면에 국제적으로는 이런 노동기준 할인이나 침해소지에 대응하기 위해 무역과 노동기준준수 여부를 연계하고, 다국적기업 행위규범을 공동으로 설정하고, 개별적인 국제협약을 통해 사회권을 보호하려는 움직임이 다양하게 나타나고 있다. 최근 멕시코와 같은 국가가 경제특구를 통해 관철시킨 낮은 노동비용과 노동기준으로 인해 얻은 많은 성장의 기회를 같은 이유에 의해서 다국적 기업이 몰리는 중국 등으로 빼앗기고 있다. 우리는 노동기준을 포함한 사회적 기반이 뒷받침되면서 세계경쟁에서 상향식 경쟁(race to the top)을 지향하는 경제특구를 만들어 갈 필요가 있다. 동북아에서의 하향경쟁보다는 경제통합과 협력의 이점을 찾는 것이 더 유익하다는 공감대를 마련할 필요가 있고 특히 중국과의 관계에서는 임금경쟁이 아니라 기술경쟁을 통해 상생의 기반을 마련할 필요가 있다. 아울러 세계적 규범과 압력을 오히려 충분히 활용해 중국보다 유리한 노동기준을 국제시장에 내세울 것이 아니라 중국도 우리만큼 국제노동기준을 준수하도록 유인할 필요가 있다.

In recent, there has been an upsurge of making special economic zones(SEZs), or interchangeably, export processing zones(EPZs). Even in Korea which is one of the OECD member countries, SEZs have been established despite some critics and struggles. This attempt can be understood as a strategic reaction against the recent success of SEZs in China. However, global labor standards strongly supported by international communities have also in recent induced that the multinational companies and developing countries follow the norm of keeping labor rights anywhere as human rights. At the same time, recent lesson of negative development of EPZs such as Mexican Maquiladora has shown that EPZs cab be the race to the bottom among developing countries. In this paper, I have argued that we need to emphasize the normative structure of global labor standards in Northeast Asia in addressing the FTAs or SEZs in order to compete and cooperate with Chinese economies, which can lead us to the race to the top. Otherwise, SEZs down-playing the social dimension and enjoying social discounts should not permit Korea's survival in the race with China. In sum, economic globalization often coupled with social dumping had made EPZs less sensitive to the social rights during the past some decades. But in this decade, it should not be the case because international communities including multinational companies has asked EPZs to be tested by global social standards. It is the time to pay attention to the exposure of EPZs to the normative constraints.