Abstract: Innovation is an important means for enterprises to obtain core competitiveness and excess profits. Accelerating the improvement of enterprise innovation capabilities is conducive to China′s transformation from a "manufacturing power" to a "manufacturing power". With the deepening of economic globalization and the advancement of the “Belt and Road” and “Going Global” strategies, Chinese enterprises have widely participated in international division of labor and transnational cooperation. In 2016, the number of foreign direct investment companies in China reached 7961 throughout the year, distributed in 164 countries and regions around the world. OFDI flow reached 170.11 billion US dollars, which is 63 times that in 2002, achieving an average annual growth of 34.4% for 14 consecutive years. At the same time, the characteristics of international cooperation of Chinese enterprise innovation is becoming more and more obvious. So it is necessary to deeply study the impact mechanism and effect of foreign direct investment, an important way for enterprises to participate in international division of labor, on enterprise innovation. This will provide micro-level empirical evidence and theoretical support for China′s current foreign direct investment policy.
The innovation of this paper is that we examine the mechanism of the effect of OFDI on the innovation effect of the home country based on heterogeneous investment motivation and heterogeneous host countries. This paper selects the comprehensive data set of manufacturing industry from the combination of the database of Chinese industrial enterprises and the directory of overseas invested enterprises (Institutions) as samples, and uses R&D input and R&D output to measure the two mechanism processes of enterprise innovation, to empirically test the home country innovation effect of enterprise FDI. Compared with the existing literature, the possible contributions of this paper include three aspects. First, this article attempts to analyze the internal mechanism of the OFDI innovation effect from a micro perspective, which enriches the related research on enterprise innovation. Second, a research paradigm of innovation decomposition process for R&D investment and R&D output is proposed. The existing research on the impact of OFDI on home country innovation is mostly based on a separate perspective. Innovation is the entire process of production, application and commercialization of technology. It not only refers to the preliminary basic research preparation, but also covers the commercialization of later research and development results. We can fully understand the home country innovation effect of OFDI only by analyzing the effect of OFDI on R&D investment and R&D output. Third, this paper selects a sample of Chinese manufacturing companies for empirical testing. As China is the largest foreign direct investment country among developing countries, its overseas investment has a clear investment motivation, which is helpful to a deeper understanding of innovation under heterogeneous investment motivation.
For answer the question of whether Chinese outward foreign direct investment promote technological innovation of home country, this paper sets two indicators for R&D investment and R&D output to characterize the impact of foreign direct investment on the technology of home country enterprises. At the same time, this paper explores the knowledge absorption mechanism and knowledge re-creation mechanism of foreign direct investment affecting the technological innovation of home country enterprises, and studies the technological innovation effects of foreign direct investment home country enterprises from multiple dimensions. The results of our examination present some evidences. First, in terms of the total sample, China′s outward foreign direct investment promote the R&D investment effectively, but do not promote the increase of R&D output. Second, the sub-sample test shows that there is a difference in the impact of heterogeneous investment motivation OFDI on R&D investment and R&D output. Technology-seeking investment significantly promotes home country enterprises′ R&D investment and R&D output, while resource-seeking investment has a certain inhibitory effect on home country R&D investment. OFDI of comprehensive production has no obvious promotion effect on R&D investment and R&D output; OFDI of business and trade has a significant promotion effect on R&D investment in the home country, but the promotion effect of this type OFDI on home country R&D output is not obvious. Third, OFDI in heterogeneous host countries has different effects on R&D investment and R&D output: investment in developed countries significantly promotes home country R&D investment; while investment in developing countries promotes home country R&D output.
This paper comprehensively evaluates the impact of OFDI on home country enterprise innovation, and concludes that OFDI has been quite effective since the implementation of China′s "Go Global" strategy. OFDI generally promotes R&D investment of enterprises, but it does not promote R&D output of enterprises, which shows that Chinese enterprises′ R&D efficiency is seriously low, which is not enough to quickly transforming R&D investment into R&D output. Therefore, while further encouraging enterprises to "go global", the government should strive to improve the efficiency of R&D in order to undertake foreign advanced technology. Therefore, while further encouraging enterprises to "go global", the government should strive to improve the efficiency of R&D in order to undertake foreign advanced technology. At the same time, it is noted that there are differences in the impact of OFDI with different investment motivations and with different host countries on the innovation of home country enterprises. To get more technology spillovers from "going global", on the one hand, government need to implement different incentives for different motivation investment. On the other hand, the government should actively encourage and guide more qualified enterprises to invest in developed countries or regions to obtain the most advanced technology and knowledge spillovers. And low-end industries in the value chain should be encouraged to transfer from home countries to other developing countries. In this way, it can not only obtain profits and reduce costs, but also release resources to undertake technologies closer to its own capabilities to promote innovation and development.

Key words: outward foreign direct investment, technological innovation, heterogeneous investment motivation