Location Choice of Chinese banking Sector's Foreign Direct Investment

In this paper, we try to investigate whether China's banking venture abroad is just for seeking asset or is also motivated for seeking market. Based on the data from 2003 to 2011, it is found that local banking profitability is a significant factor. The result is robust for various specifications, such as changing the variable for local profitability from GDP per capita to percentage of M2 divided by GDP. The result is also statistically significant even though the sample of Hong Kong is omitted from the data. This result enriches the research about bank internationalization's motivation from the developing countries.