Introduction

The project,under cooperation with Inter-American Bank, compared Chinese direct investment in Panama, Brazil and Mexico through data analysis and semi-structured interviews with Chinese companies as well as local government agencies and companies in host countries. The findings identified that: on the one hand, there are some differences for China’s companies investing in Panama, Brazil and Mexico, and parts of the differences are source from the basic differences of the location advantages of these countries, such as convenient logistics in Panama, internal big domestic market in Brazil and the accessing US market from NAFTA mechanism in Mexico. On the other hand, there is common character of China’s companies investing in Panama, Brazil and Mexico, that is China’s companies are late comer and currently are still challenged by CAGE difference, so the current investment could be regarded as the initial phrase of the investments.