Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-103).

The total amount of FDI ¡]Foreign Direct Investment¡^ in China has increased dramatically in recent years; however, what factors have motivated Chinese firms to invest abroad? Since 2001, China¡¦s foreign exchange reserves have been continuously increasing1, while holding significant FX reserves has pressured the central bank to offset the loss which resulted from RMB appreciation. Moreover, China, where they controlled less strategic asset than the global rivals, taking FDI was also late than developed countries. As a response, Chinese government has implemented the ¡§Going abroad¡¨ policy that foster OFDI which encouraged domestic companies to invest overseas so as to enhance its international competitiveness. In doing so, it is able to address the competitive disadvantage, acquire both tangible and intangible assets by engaging international activities, and in the meantime to sterilize the increase of foreign reserves. In terms of FDI entry mode, China has engaged in different levels of transnational investment. Exporting, OEM, international subcontracting, and joint venture are generally undertaking by Chinese firms, whereas state-owned companies focus on mergers, acquisition and organic expansion. Previous studies into the internationalization have tended to discuss inward FDI, while outward FDI is also important. For the above reason, this study aims at examining both these two parts as well as the internationalization of Chinese firms. Starting from the top 500 enterprises, we will mainly target the energy and IT industry as the basis of analysis. The data collection spans from 2000 to 2009, also include the content analysis .To verify the hypothesis, we apply multiple regression to investigate whether the internationalization of these two sectors have display the correlation between sales revenue, and foreign paten outputs. The empirical results find that: ¡]1¡^ The motivation of IT industry are more inclined to acquire intangible asset and explore new market, whereas the energy industry aims at obtaining natural resources.¡]2¡^ On the respect of entry mode, the incentive of state-owned enterprises is to fulfill the state policy , mainly adopt mergers and acquisitions. and the non-central state-owned and private enterprises relatively focus on organic expansion as well as the M&A. ¡]3¡^ With these two hypotheses, the first one reflects the internationalization is significant to foreign patent outputs and positively related to each other. and second exhibits that all independent variables, including the internationalization ¡]score¡^, patent outputs as well as exporting are all positively significant to the sales revenue. In conclusion, ¡¥¡¥going abroad¡¦¡¦ strategy has positive contributions to the sales revenue.