Comparison Study on the Actual FDI Utilization among Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong and Zhejiang

Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang were the top four provinces in China in 2012 by local gross product according to the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China (2013). The amount of their foreign investment actually utilized was US$23.54911 billion, US$35.75956 billion, US$12.35267 billion, and US$13.06926 billion respectively. Comparison method is adopted to analyze the actual FDI utilization in the four provinces. The findings show that foreign direct investment (FDI) plays a very important role in the economic development of the provinces. In the FDI utilization, they have summarized their experience and lessons, such as adding capitals, increasing employment and tax revenue, promoting international trade, industry structure adjustment, and economic growth, bringing state-of-the-art operation concepts, management methods and marketing skills etc. They have both common problems and special problems in their FDI utilization including FDI utilization imbalance in industry distribution and region distribution and so on. Their experience and lessons can be used by other provinces in China for reference so that they can use their FDI more reasonably and the FDI can be used to play a more effective part in the economic development in all the provinces and even the whole country.