Chasing Foreign Capital

This chapter examines the rise of the FDI-attraction paradigm at the national level and the emergence of local investment-seeking states in the 1990s. It explores in detail the varied strategies that city governments employed to attract foreign investors to launch the campaign of FDI attraction, ranging from tax cuts and land and utility discounts to industrial zone establishments. At one end of the strategic continuum are local governments that prioritized large, leading multinationals that have been playing the role of the “dragon’s head” at the top of the global value chain, whereas, on the other end are cities where bureaucrats brokered deals with small-scale foreign firms established by “guerilla investors” at the bottom of the value chain through flexible arrangements.