China’s Quest for Energy through FDI: New Empirical Evidence

China’s current economic development depends heavily on its access to energy resources, and it is increasingly shaping Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) in a quest for resources located abroad. The aim of this paper is to answer the two following questions: How much did the Chinese global quest for energy drive its OFDI between 2005 and 2012? And has the quest for energy been sensitive to the geographical location of the resources? We used data on Chinese OFDI from the China Global Investment Tracker, as well as diverse host countries determinants of previously tested OFDI. We measured the impact of host country energy production in the allocation of investments. Using several multivariate regression models, we demonstrate that energy resources were the main driver of Chinese OFDI in 92 host countries during the studied period, and that there was no sensitivity to the geographical location of the resources.