TITLE:
International Students, Cultural Distance and Foreign Direct Investments of Chinese Enterprises—From the Perspective of African Countries
AUTHORS:
Bio Sia Seko Baga Bio Maro
KEYWORDS:
International Students in China, Cultural Distance, Chinese Enterprises, Foreign Direct Investment, African Country
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.14 No.3,
May
29,
2026
ABSTRACT: Educational globalization is a new feature of the development of economic globalization. With the rapid growth of economic globalization, educational globalization has become irreversible, and educational exchanges and cooperation among countries worldwide are becoming more and more frequent. Since 2000, with the Chinese government’s “going global” strategy and the successful holding of the “China Africa Cooperation Forum” many times, the African student program in China has become an essential link in China-Africa economic and trade cooperation. Taking the micro-data of direct investment of 1586 Chinese enterprises in 43 African countries from 2003 to 2014 as the research sample, this paper empirically tests the impact of international students in China on Chinese enterprises’ direct investment in Africa. The empirical analysis results show that the number of international students in China significantly promotes Chinese enterprises’ direct investment in African countries, and cultural distance has a negative regulatory effect on the relationship between international students in China and Chinese enterprises’ direct investment in Africa, that is, cultural space weakens the promotion of international students in China to OFDI. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that compared with African countries in the high-income and low resource endowment groups, the impact of international students in China on OFDI in low-income and high resource endowment countries is more prominent.