Facilitator or inhibitor? The effect of host-country intellectual property rights protection on China’s technology-driven acquisitions

Acknowledging the importance of technology-driven acquisitions for China, and of host-country intellectual property rights protection (IPRP) in the Tech Cold War era, this study – drawing on institutional-based and springboard logics – investigates the effects of host-country IPRP on China’s technology-driven acquisitions. Based on panel data of 377 country/year observations of Chinese listed firms in 29 countries between 2008 and 2020, our results illustrate an inverted U-shaped relationship between the strength of host IPRP institutions and the quantity of China’s technology-driven acquisitions. This inverted U-shaped relationship is weakened by home-host economic distance, rather than political distance. Clearly, host-country IPRP matters in Chinese firms’ location choices for technology-driven acquisitions and those host countries with IPRP that is either too weak or too strong are unattractive to Chinese acquirers. Our study responds to the debate about the inconsistent findings of IPRP’s effects on foreign investments, and enriches the research on springboard internationalization.