Empirical Research on Port's Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Economic Development in China

Using time series and panel data in the period of 1991-2008, this paper estimates the effect of port FDI on the regional economy in China. It shows that port FDI has positive impact on the regional economic growth in China. However, the unbalanced distribution of port FDI worsens the unbalanced economic development among those regions. To promote the balanced development of China's regional economy, it not only needs to remove the negative effects of unbalanced development in a dynamic balance, but also to make the non-equilibrium to converge.