A Spatio-temporal Analysis of Taiwanese Direct Investment in China, 1991-2014: Visualizing and Mapp

What spatial and temporal patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) would a small country have towards a rising great power, while they are politically adversarial but economically interdependent with each other? Using the most up-to-date dataset covering Taiwanese direct investment (TDI) to China since 1991 to 2014 and geo-referenced with the precision to the street level, the project discovers, analyzes and visualizes patterns of geographical distribution of TDI within the temporal context of different political and policy interactions between Taiwan and China. A variety of statistics and techniques in quantitative political geography are used for the analysis, and the findings are mapped and visualized with geographic information system (GIS) and other software and tools. This project also discovers and explains how different sectors in business and industries of Taiwan interconnect with and influence investment location decisions of others within the political context across the Taiwan Strait. To enrich the literature of FDI and politics, the project aims to identify more variables as well as generate more interesting hypotheses regarding how politics influences the selection of FDI location by this exploratory study, and lay the foundation for further econometric analysis in the next phase. JSIA Assistant Professor, Roger Chi-Feng Liu, is collaborating with Dr. Chenyuan Tung of National Chengchi University on this project.