Strategic Partnering with Chinese Companies: Hidden Motives and Treasures

In this paper we aim to investigate the key drivers of international alliance formation from the perspective of Chinese companies. Our results indicate that Chinese companies enter into alliances with Western companies mainly to get accesses to international markets and to develop their technological and managerial competences further. Therefore we can say that Chinese companies particularly value task-related criteria when selecting Western partners. Nevertheless we also find that Chinese companies also include 'soft' factors such trust, compatibility or reputation in their partner selection process. We therefore conclude that in searching for Western partners, Chinese companies try to find a combination of 'hard' competencies such as technology and other resources as well as more 'soft' attributes such as trust, mutual understanding and commitment.