【正文】 ment knowhow and other skills to China. The authorities were also now adept and fortable with at administering foreign invested enterprises in China. It is likely that equivalent advantages were sought when Chinese enterprises invested 2 abroad. Familiar cost and riskminimising features of IJVs will also have been important to the investment approval agencies (Zhan 1995, Taylor 2020, Wang 2020). From an enterprise perspective, inef?cient domestic capital markets and budget constraints meant that many Chinese enterprises, including stateowned ones, often found it dif?cult to obtain suf?cient funds to purchase overseas assets outright, pelling them to opt for the IJV alternative. The JV form also allowed Chinese MNEs to exercise a degree of control over local operations whilst avoiding outright ownership and the conitant exposure to political and mercial risk. Chinese enterprises could tap foreign partner contributions, such as improved access to market intelligence, knowledge of the local operating environment, opportunities for reputation riding and better access to local distribution channels through the IJV (Taylor 2020). When established with other ethnicallyChinese enterprises (in Hong Kong and elsewhere), the JV form also allowed relational assets to be optimised, reducing perceived risks and costs associated with psychic distance, especially for smaller and less experienced Chinese investors (Zhan 1995). Mutual trust would also have been easier to establish. Thus, we see both institutional and ?rmspeci?c factors in?uencing the choice of IJV by Chinese ?rms at this time. From the mid1990s onwards, however, SAFE data at individual project level reveal that whollyowned FDI projects have increasingly substituted for jointlyowned ones in the international expansion of Chinese enterprise, with 61 percent of overseas af?liates in approved projects taking this form in 2020 pared to 30 percent in 1991. We note that this contrasts somewhat with the ?ndings of Taylor (2020), who reports much greater use of IJVs in the recent internationalisation of Chinese ?rms, especially in manufacturing related activity. A number of reasons explain the more frequent use of the whollyowned entry mode in recent years. First, more frequent approval of wholly Chineseowned projects re?ects growing con?dence among the regulating authorities that managers of state owned Chinese MNEs have bee suf?ciently experienced and skilled to take control of, and coordinate effectively, the activities of geographicallydispersed af?liates. It is also a re?ection, at least in part, of the strategic importance placed on particular projects by the Chinese authorities. Theory asserts that, by internalising markets, the internationalising ?rm 3 is able to reduce its dependency on independent intermediaries。 Mauritius (where export quota restrictions are mostly absent), Jamaica and Fiji (UNCTAD 2020). A further illustration of defensive, marketseeking FDI is provided by the purchase in 2020 of the insolvent German television maker Schneider Electronics AG by TCL, China?s second largest telev