作者：Kun Jiang；Larry D. Qiu

翻译：陈达飞

来源：VoxChina

原题：China’s Joint Venture Policy and the International Transfer of Technology

The ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States has offered few signs of an immediate resolution. Claims by the U.S. government of unfair trade practices on China’s part center on what the Trump administration argues are abusive practices deriving from China’s investment rules. Specifically, multinational firms seeking to conduct foreign direct investment (FDI) in China are often required to form legal business relationships with a domestic Chinese partner, typically in the form of international joint ventures (IJVs) that establish a new offshoot firm. These relationships – most often required in high-tech manufacturing industries suchas automobile production, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and advanced chemicals– are characterized by explicit technology transfer requirements wherein the rights of the foreign intellectual property holder are often severely curtailed.

中美之间持续不断的贸易争端在短期内似乎没有终结的迹象。美国政府对中国不公平贸易行为的指控，集中在特朗普政府所称的中国投资规则不合理之处。具体来说，寻求在中国进行外商直接投资(FDI)的跨国公司经常被要求与中国国内的合作伙伴建立合法的商业关系，通常是以设立新分支机构的国际合资企业(IJV)的形式。建立合资企业——在汽车生产、电子、制药和先进化学品等高科技制造业中最为常见——的一个特点是明确的技术转让要求。除此之外，外国知识产权持有人的权利往往受到严重限制。

IJV partnerships typically require the foreign firm to transfer proprietary methods, designs, and other know-how tothe joint venture firm. The implicit objective of such a policy is to foster the transfer of advanced foreign knowledge and trade secrets – a feature that foreign firms are forced to reckon with as the price of doing business in the world’s largest market. China has recently taken steps to liberalize its joint venture requirements in certain industries, but the policy environment remains one in which a technology transfer is expected of foreign investors. For instance, while China’s government was recently able to lure automaker Tesla to establish a production line in Shanghai by allowing the company to wholly ownits factory, the investment agreement still entails cooperation with local authorities on R&D and technology.

国际合资伙伴关系通常要求外国公司向合资公司转让专有方法、设计和其他专门知识。这一政策隐含的目标是促进先进的外国知识和商业机密的转让——外国公司被迫将其视为在全球最大市场开展业务的代价。中国最近已采取措施放宽某些行业的合资要求，但政策环境仍是希望外国投资者转让技术。例如，尽管中国政府最近允许汽车制造商特斯拉(Tesla)全资拥有其工厂，从而吸引该公司在上海建立一条生产线，但该投资协议仍需要在研发和技术方面与当地政府合作。

Foreign Direct Investment and the Diffusion of Knowledge

外商直接投资和知识的扩散

One of the primary benefits of foreign investment for a host country is exposure to advanced foreign processes,management practices, and designs. In principle, this exposure should enhance the competitiveness of domestic firms, who will benefit from the technology transfers that arise in the form of higher productivity and expanded innovative capacity. China’s foreign investment policy is grounded in such a premise, as the original proponents of the outward-looking foreign investment policies that began in the late 1970s argue that opening up to foreign investment is the most efficient way to obtain foreign technology.

对东道国来说，外商投资的主要好处之一是可以接触到国外先进的操作方法、管理方法和设计。原则上来讲，这应该可以提高国内公司的竞争力，它们将从以提高生产力和扩大创新能力的形式出现的技术转让中获益。中国的对外投资政策就是基于这样一个前提，上世纪70年代末开始实行的外向型投资政策的支持者认为，向外国投资开放是获得外国技术的最有效途径。

A sizable literature has uncovered evidence on the existence of such technology transfer effects. The foundational studies in this area – for example, those of Javorcik (2004) or Keller and Yeaple(2009) – show that FDI generates broad knowledge spillovers on host country firms as multinational investors transfer their technology and methods to their foreign affiliates. These effects are diffused both directly and indirectly to domestic firms, who, as levels of foreign investment increases, tend to exhibit higher levels of productivity or engage in more knowledge creation.

大量的文献已经发现了这种技术转让效应存在的证据。这一领域的基础研究——例如Javorcik(2004)或Keller和Yeaple(2009)的研究——表明，外商直接投资在东道国公司产生了广泛的知识溢出，因为跨国投资者将其技术和方法转让给了它们在国外的附属公司。这些影响直接或间接地扩散到本土公司，这些公司随着外商投资的增加，往往表现出较高的生产力水平，或从事更多的知识创造工作。

For foreign investors, the benefits availedby joint ventures are clear. A domestic partner can help the foreign investor navigate the regulatory and cultural complexities that arise from entering anew market. To ensure the success of their foreign operations, multinational enterprises seek out partners with large market shares that possess awell-developed capacity for innovation or partners that are alreadywell-established in international markets. On the other hand, the threat of a Chinese joint venture partner appropriating intellectual property is a real onefor foreign investors; however, the reality is that such costs seem to be outweighed by the benefits to multinational firms who establish Chinese operations.

对于外国投资者来说，合资企业的好处是显而易见的。本土合作伙伴可以帮助外国投资者应对进入新市场所带来的监管和文化上的复杂关系。跨国企业为确保其海外经营的成功，往往会寻找市场份额大、创新能力强的合作伙伴，或者在国际市场上已有一定地位的合作伙伴。另一方面，对于外国投资者来说，中国合资伙伴盗用知识产权的威胁也是不可否认的。然而，现实情况是，这些成本似乎被在华设立业务的跨国公司所获得的好处所抵消。

In our recent work (Jiang et al. 2018), we analyze the above aspects of IJVs with an emphasis on exploring their role infacilitating the transfer of foreign technology to Chinese firms, and in doingso investigate whether China’s investment policy achieves its purpose.

在我们最近的工作(Jiang et al. 2018)中，我们分析了国际合资企业的上述问题，重点探讨了它们在促进外国技术向中国企业转移方面的作用，并以此调查中国的投资政策是否达到了目的。

Joint Ventures and Technology Transfer: The Case of China

合资企业与技术转让：以中国为例

IJVs are a unique mode of foreign investment and there are multiple channels of technology transfer (depicted inFigure 1) through which domestic firms might benefit. In addition to any contractual and regulatory obligations, a foreign investor has a direct incentive to transfer proprietary know-how to its joint venture in order forthe new operation to succeed. This helps joint venture firms become strong performers relative to other domestic firms. This first channel is what we denote as an internal technology transfer that takes place between the foreign parent and the offshoot joint venture firm.

中外合资企业是一种独特的外国投资模式，它有多种技术转让渠道(如图1所示)使得本土企业可能从中受益。除了任何履行合同和管理义务外，外国投资者有直接的动机将专有技术转让给其合资企业，以便新的业务取得成功，这有助于合资公司在与其他公司竞争中表现优异。第一个渠道是我们所说的外国母公司和合资公司分支机构之间的内部技术转让（Internal）。

Figure 1： Joint Venture Formation andTechnology Transfer

图1：合资企业的形成与技术转让

The second effect that we consider is one in which the Chinese IJV partner benefits indirectly from the transfer of technology to the joint venture. Foreign investors have little incentive to transfer technology directly to their joint venture partner, but knowledge could still be diffused to the partner through indirect observation or outright appropriation. We denote this effect as the intergenerational technology transfer effect, as IJVs generate spillovers on their domestic partner firms.

我们考虑的第二个渠道是，中外合资伙伴从（国外母公司）向其转让技术的过程中间接受益。（在这种情形下）外国投资者几乎没有动力将技术直接转让给他们的合资公司，但知识仍然可以通过间接观察或直接挪用的方式向合作伙伴扩散。我们将这种效应称为代际技术转让效应，因为中外合资公司会对其本土母公司产生溢出效应（编者注：比如，上汽大众对荣威的扩散）。

Finally, domestic firms outside of the joint venture might themselves be impacted by the proliferation of foreign investment and could benefit indirectly from the spread of foreign technology. The knowledge spillovers that arise from FDI represent the external effects of IJV formation.

最后，合资企业以外的本土公司本身也可能受到外商投资产生的技术扩散的影响，并可能间接受益于外国技术的传播。外商直接投资产生的知识外溢是中外合资企业产生的外部效应。

Evidenceon Partner Selection and the Effects of the Technology Transfer

合作伙伴选择和技术转让影响的证据

We quantify the channels outlined above inan econometric framework using an administrative firm-level data set that accounts for all joint ventures operating in China from 1998–2007. Our dataset allows usto observe detailed attributes of both the joint venture firms as well as the domestic Chinese partner firms, along with all other Chinese firms with at least 5 million RMB in yearly sales operating during the period of time covered by our sample.

我们采用一个公司层面的数据库，对上述计量经济学框架中列出的渠道进行了量化分析。该数据库涵盖了1998年至2007年在华经营的所有合资企业，这使我们可以观察到合资公司和中国国内合作伙伴公司的详细属性，以及在我们的样本所涵盖的时间段内，年销售额至少为500万元人民币的所有其他中国公司的详细属性。

First, we explore the characteristics ofthe domestic Chinese firms that are selected as partners to form an IJV. The Chinese firms most likely to be chosen as partners in IJVs are larger and more productive (as measured by total factor productivity), engage in more innovation and patenting, and are more export-oriented. Such productive, well-established firms on the frontiers of innovation are the firms that possess the absorptive capacity (after Cohen and Levinthal 1990) to benefit from the intergenerational technology transfer effect posited earlier.

首先，我们探讨了选择中国国内企业作为合作伙伴组建合资企业的特点。最有可能被选为合资企业伙伴的中国企业规模更大，生产率更高(以全要素生产率衡量)，从事的创新和专利活动更多，出口导向性更强。这种处于创新前沿的具有生产力的、成熟的公司具有吸收和学习能力，能够从前文提出的代际技术转让效应中获益。

As evidence for the internal technology transfer effect, we show that joint venture firms operate very well along several dimensions of performance. Controlling for other firm characteristics, joint venture firms are on average more productive (by about 30 percent asmeasured by total factor productivity), secure higher sales, and engage in more patenting relative to other, non-joint venture Chinese firms. This is evidence consistent with the beneficial transfer of technology from the foreign investor firm.

作为内部技术转让效应的证据，我们的分析表明合资公司在如下几个方面的表现都很好。在控制其他企业特征的情况下，与中国其他非合资企业相比，合资企业的平均生产率更高(以全要素生产率衡量约为30%)，销售收入更高，专利申请也更多。这也证明引入外国投资者有助于技术转移。

We then investigate whether the domestic Chinese partners in joint venture relationships are also better performers as aresult of their indirect exposure to foreign knowledge. Importantly, we control for the fact that these partner firms are typically better performers even before the formation of the joint venture. We account for this endogeneity using two approaches. First, we construct our sample in such a way that domestic partner firms are matched with domestic non-partner firms that have similar attributes to ensure that the treatment and control groups are similar. Second, we control for firm-level fixed effects to capture the underlying characteristics that make domestic firms more attractive to foreign investors looking to form a joint venture.

然后，我们还考察了在合资企业中的中国国内合作伙伴是否因为间接接触外国知识而表现得更好。重要的是，我们控制了这一事实，即这些合作伙伴公司甚至在成立合资企业之前也有很好的表现。我们使用两种方法来处理这种内生性。首先，我们构建样本的方式是将国内合作伙伴公司与具有相似属性的国内非合作伙伴公司进行匹配，以确保试验组和对照组是相似的。其次，我们控制公司层面的固定效应，以捕捉某些潜在特征，它们使国内企业对寻求组建合资企业的外国投资者更具吸引力。

The domestic parents of IJVs exhibit above average performance along the same dimensions as joint venture firms, although to a diminished degree. Again, the positive effects on firm performance implythe indirect transfer of knowledge via the intergenerational channel. To reiterate the point from earlier, while foreign investors have a strong incentive to transfer technology directly to their joint ventures, no such incentive exists with regard to their Chinese partners. The fact that the intergenerational effect is more muted than the internal effect is consistent with foreign investors taking efforts to preventthe dissemination of their intellectual property.

（实证分析表明）中外合资企业的本土母公司在相同的方面表现出高于平均水平的业绩，尽管程度有所下降（编者按：相当于将上汽荣威与某家纯中资汽车生产商进行比较）。同样，对企业绩效的积极影响意味着知识通过代际渠道的间接转移。重申一下，虽然外国投资者有强烈的动机将技术直接转让给他们的合资企业，但他们的中国合作伙伴却没有这种动机（译者注：即中国合作伙伴并没有动机将技术转让给其母公司）。代际传播的影响比内部传播的影响要小，这一事实与外国投资者努力阻止其知识产权传播是一致的。

Finally, we examine the effect on domestic firms in industries where IJVs are more prevalent. This external effect – theleakage of advanced technology beyond the confines of IJVs – is found toengender better performance among other domestic Chinese firms. When the shareof an industry’s sales conducted by IJVs grows by 10 percent, the typical domestic Chinese firm in the industry is found to be on average 10 percent more productive. For the effect arising from domestic IJV partners, a 10 percent increase in partner firms’ share of industry sales yields around a 4.5 percent increase in other firms’ productivity. Strikingly, the bulk of these external effects seem to arise from joint ventures established with American partners,an aspect of our analysis that sheds light on the origins of current U.S. complaints about unauthorized technology transfers.

最后，我们考察了在中外合资企业比较普遍的行业中，（组建合资企业）对其它本土企业的影响。分析发现，这种外部效应——先进技术的外溢超出了合资企业的范围——在中国国内其它企业中产生了更好的绩效。当合资企业在某一行业的销售份额增长10%时，该行业中典型的中国本土企业的生产率平均会提高10%。对于合资企业中国合作伙伴的影响是，合作伙伴公司在行业销售中所占份额每增加10%，其它公司的生产率就会提高4.5%左右。（译者注：图1中有两个external，这两句话，分别做了考察。）引人注目的是，这些外部影响的大部分似乎来自于与美国合作伙伴建立的合资企业。我们在这方面的分析，揭示了当前美国对未经授权的技术转让现象的抱怨的根源。

How do these external effects compare tothose from wholly-foreign owned FDI? Our estimates indicate that the extent ofthe knowledge spillovers from these two sources are approximately equal, with each accounting for around 10 percent of the productivity growth of Chinese firms over the period of our sample. These are large effects, but the question must be asked whether China’s joint venture policy leads to a more efficient outcome than what would arise from a more open environment. If the burdens imposed by the IJV requirement act as a deterrent for FDI, it could be the case that China’s economy would benefit from a more liberalized investment regime.

与外商独资的FDI相比，外部效应如何?我们的估计表明，来自这两种渠道的知识溢出程度大致相当，在我们的样本期内，每一种都占中国企业生产率增长的10%左右。这些影响是巨大的，但必须要问的是，中国的合资政策是否会带来扩大开放更有效的结果。如果合资要求所施加的负担对外商直接投资起到威慑作用，那么中国经济可能会从更加自由化的投资体制中受益。（译者注：引申的意思是说，如果现在外企和外国政府都指责这种合资政策，中国放弃这种要求，扩大开放，或许受益更明显。一方面，第三只腿——“外部效应”仍然存在；另一方面，扩大开放，还会强化这种“外部效应”。）

Broader Implications and the U.S.–China Trade Dispute

更广泛的含义与美中贸易争端

Originally, the main channel through which foreign investment entered China in recent years IJVs have yielded much of their role to wholly-foreign owned enterprises. This de-emphasis of IJVs has not deterred the Trump administration from enacting billions of dollars inretaliatory tariffs in response to Chinese investment rules, setting off the largest trade dispute in recent memory. The fact remains that IJVs are distinct from other forms of FDI in the precise ways in which they facilitate technology transfers, and so long as China seeks to close its technology gap with the West, IJVs will remain a viable option for acquiring foreign knowledge.

最初，外商投资进入中国的主要渠道是合资企业。但最近，它们的大部分角色都转移给了外商独资企业。合资企业重要性的下降，并未阻止特朗普政府对中国（“不合理的”）投资规则征收数十亿美元的报复性关税，从而引发近年来最大的贸易争端。事实上，在促进技术转让的方式上，合资企业与其他形式的外商直接投资不同。只要中国还在寻求缩小与西方的技术差距，合资企业仍将是获取外国知识的可行选择。

Our work sheds light on this important issue in investment policy and unpacks an important aspect of globalization.The effects of FDI have been well-examined, but the channels of technology transfer have been little explored. Importantly, we uncover the novel (andtimely) finding that the effects arising from IJVs seem to be approximately as large as those that arise from wholly foreign-owned FDI. Whether China can be coerced to shut off this source of knowledge diffusion – and whether the unilateral retaliation enacted by the U.S. will persuade them to do it – are questions without obvious answers.

我们的工作阐明了投资政策中的这一重要问题，揭示了全球化的一个重要方面。外商直接投资的影响已得到了充分的评估，但对技术转让的渠道的考察却很少。重要的是，我们有一个新颖(且及时)的发现，即合资企业产生的影响似乎与外商独资产生的影响大致相当。是否可以迫使中国关闭这种知识传播的渠道（译者注：即取消合资要求，中国正在逐步取消部分行业的合资要求，比如部分金融公司），以及美国单方面实施的报复是否会说服他们这么做，这些都是没有明确答案的问题。

作者：

Kun Jiang, Nottingham University; WolfgangKeller, University of Colorado-Boulder;

Larry D. Qiu, University of Hong Kong;William Ridley, University of Colorado.

References

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