Abstract:     As economic globalization faces growing headwinds and the world changes at an ever-accelerating pace, many multinational companies (especially Chinese latecomers from emerging economies) are encountering frustrating layers of obstruction in their global research and development (R&D) layout. To this end, the Chinese government adheres to its confirmed basic state policy of opening up to the outside world, counteracting the trend of counter-globalization, and helping Chinese companies innovate (notwithstanding this severe international situation) by using a high level of openness to get stronger technological, human, and financial support. As an important institutional innovation to promote China′s sustained opening to the rest of the world, the interoperability mechanism of stock market transactions represented by the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect (the SH-SZ-HK stock connect) has attracted much more cross-border capital. This promises to carve out an increasingly prominent role for investors from developed capital markets like Europe, and the U.S. to help develop Chinese enterprises. This paper will, therefore, focus upon this question: Can stock market liberalization overcome the dilemmas associated with counter-globalization, and facilitate Chinese companies′ participation in R&D internationalization activities?
    This paper will demonstrate that stock market liberalization has both theoretical contributions and practical solutions to R&D internationalization. When choosing which stocks to purchase, foreign investors avoid those whose growth prospects are hard to determine. This incentivizes companies to plan and disclose their strategic information on R&D and internationalization, thus gradually developing a long-term perspective and increasing the need to allocate resources for R&D internationalization, i.e. the "catering effect". After successfully buying an underlying stock, foreign investors who practice value investing actively provide these companies with capital and knowledge to help ensure the smooth implementation of R&D internationalization projects, i.e. the "resource effect". In fact, foreign investors not be able to drive companies to participate in R&D internationalization. Unlike mature Western capital markets, China′s capital market is in a state of transition and lacks transparency for market information, making it difficult for foreign investors who already have a local information disadvantage to ascertain the truth and falsity of the companies′ public information. 
     Unfortunately, a few scholars have discussed how stock market liberalization impacts local business innovation, but there is almost a gap in the evidence for the internationalization of R&D. In addition, there are endogeneity problems in the research design of existing literature that are difficult to overcome, -e.g., biased estimates due to omitted variables like culture and the law in cross-country studies, and whether a country′s decision to open its stock market is dependent on the level of domestic economic development or the maturity of its financial system, i.e., a two-way causality. Therefore, whether stock market liberalization can promote the internationalization of corporate R&D needs to be supported by rigorous theoretical and empirical evidence.
    Given the successive implementation of the SH-SZ-HK stock connect scenario, the impact of stock market liberalization on the internationalization of corporate R&D was reviewed using time-varying Difference in Differences model that relied on data from A-share listed companies over the period 2008-2019. The results demonstrated that stock market liberalization promotes firms′ participation in R&D internationalization, mainly through the demand for value information from foreign investors, which induce firms to develop long-term perspectives, i.e. the "catering effect". Further testing also found the effect was more pronounced for firms in the eastern part of China, mainly promoting R&D internationalization outside the US.
    The marginal contributions of this paper include: (1) applying the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate behavior to analysis of R&D internationalization—a particularly key issue for Chinese companies looking to catch up with technology and to leapfrogging develop; and (2) taking Chinese scenarios such as investor structure, firm characteristics, and institutional environment, this paper proposes two paths for foreign investors to influence the internationalization of corporate R&D, i.e. the "catering effect" and the "resource effect", to reveal the impact of foreign investors′ transition from ‘outsiders’ to ‘insiders’ on the business; and (3) the empirical research relies upon the successive SH-SZ-HK stock connect scenario to fill the endogeneity gap in existing studies. Finally, this paper will suggest that the Chinese government should focus upon improving foreign investor relations management and explore internet-based forms of investor interaction, while continuing to lower the threshold for foreign investment entry, and strengthen the protection of foreign investors′ rights and interests.

Key words:  stock market liberalization, R&D internationalization, SH-SZ-HK stock connect