Chinese stategic [sic] (outward) investment in Latin America: case study - Brazil

Chinese remarkable economic growth averaging at 10 per cent per annum since the late 70's has been facilitated by a strategy of promoting exports and attracting foreign capital. Multinational companies from the US, Japan, and Europe have led their way in using China as off-shoring platform for the labor-intensive stages of goods production. China currently has an account surplus of 6-7 per cent of their GDP and has accumulated more reserves than any country in the world at approximately US$ 300 trillion. Given its standing as one of the major suppliers of global capital, Chinese government in the recent years has been pursuing a policy of outward FDI under which some of the state-owned Chinese enterprises have been provided with soft capital to become global leaders on the lines of Japanese and Korean trading houses. The financial crisis of 2007/08 had enabled the Chinese government an opportunity to provide capital to companies in the developed and developing world who are currently starved for financing. The analytical framework of internationalization theory suggests that one should look into the motivations for internationalization and the literatures identified the following drivers of internationalization process: (a) Market-seeking FDI, (b) Resource-seeking FDI, (c) Efficiency seeking FDI and (d) Strategic asset-seeking FDI. Using the case study of PETROBRAS and MMX Mining in Brazil, the study found that major driver of investment by Chinese companies is in acquisition of strategic assets for China's future development. In the case of PETROBRAS, the mode of investment was supplier's credit rather than the traditional FDI or portfolio investment. In the case of MMX, it was the stake in the equity capital of the firm. Thus, the modern modes of outward FDI by Chinese firms are more roundabout forms rather than the traditional modes of Foreign Direct Investment and Foreign Portfolio Investments addressed by most researchers. These investments have blurred the traditional distinction between investments (in