What drives the venture capital investments in China?

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine the venture capital (VC) industry in China. It has demonstrated a history of high growth with significant variations over time. The authors have examined the trends and determinants of VC investments in China over a 20-year period from 1995 to 2014. They find that the aggregate amount of VC investments, the total number of venture deals and the average amount of venture investments per deal in China are all significantly impacted by macroeconomic conditions (i.e. GDP, export, money supply), technology innovations and financial market indicators (i.e. initial public offerings (IPOs), interest rate, price-to-earnings ratio, etc.). They also find that the 2007 China A-Share stock market crash and the subsequent global financial crisis have motivated VCists in China to adjust their investment strategies and risk levels by allocating more capital to later-stage investments and securing more deals with later-round financings. However, after the 2008 global financial crisis, the China’s venture industry has recovered faster compared to the US counterpart response. Design/methodology/approach The authors first perform trend analysis of VC investments at an aggregate level, by stages of development, and across industry from 1995 to 2014.To test H1 and H2, the authors use multiple regression models with lagged explanatory variables. To test H3, the authors use univariate tests to compare the measures of VC investments at an aggregate level, stage funds ratios, stage deals ratios and financing series ratios during both a five-year and seven-year time windows around the 2007 A-Share stock market crash and the subsequent financial crisis. Findings The development of the VC industry in China has demonstrated a history of high growth with significant variation over time. The authors find that the aggregate amount of VC investments, the total number of venture deals and the average amount of venture investments per deal in China are all significantly impacted by macroeconomic conditions (i.e. GDP, export, money supply), technology innovations and financial market indicators (i.e. IPOs, interest rate, price-to-earnings ratio, etc.). The authors also find that the 2007 China A-Share stock market crash and the subsequent global financial crisis have motivated VCists in China to adjust their investment strategies and risk by allocating more capital to later-stage investments and securing more deals with later-round financings. However, the China VC industry has recovered faster compared to the USA just after the 2008 global financial crisis. Research limitations/implications There are also limitations in the study. The VC data in China in the earlier 1990s might not be very reliable due to the quality of statistics. Therefore, the trend analysis and discussions mainly focus on the time after 2000. Also, the authors cannot find VC financing sequence data for the analysis. Second, there is no doubt that the policy impact from Chinese transforming economic system and government policies on its VC industry is substantial (Su and Wang, 2013). However, they cannot find an appropriate variable to be included in the empirical models to consider this effect. Further study on this area would provide meaningful information. Third, although the authors have done comparison study between the VC industry in China in this study and the VC industry in the US documented in Ning et al. (2015) and discussed some interesting findings, more in-depth research in this area will be very useful. Practical implications The findings have meaningful implications for VCists and start-up companies seeking equity financings in China. VCists should closely monitor macroeconomic and market conditions to make appropriate adjustments to their risk and investment strategies. Entrepreneurs seeking equity financings for their business could also monitor the identified macroeconomic and market indicators, which can help them with their timing and to negotiate a better equity financing deal. VC financing is more likely to succeed when key macroeconomic and market indicators become favorable. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by testing the supply and demand theory on the VC market proposed by Poterba (1989) and Gompers and Lerner (1998) from the macroeconomic perspective using 20 years’ VC data from China. The authors also examine how the 2007 A-Share stock market crash and the subsequent financial crisis affected VCists to adjust their risk levels and investment strategies. It provides useful information for international academia and policymakers to understand the quick rise of China VC industry. The authors also find that the macroeconomic drivers of VC industry are somewhat different under different economic systems.

Government Stimulus Policy Effects to Foster Indonesia's Economic Growth: Evidence from Seventeen Years' Experience

“…It can be interpreted that the increase of economic growth by 1% in the previous quarter had a positive and significant impact on the current aggregate GDP of 0.31%. The findings are following the research results by (Ning et al, 2019). Furthermore, this model can also explain some critical variables and GPD that is Variable LNEXP (-1), which has a significant positive impact of 0.029%.…”

Evaluating the Performance of the Government Venture Capital Guiding Fund Using the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

“…Many investors favor venture capital (VC) due to its unique foresight, flexibility, and high returns; this results in increased numbers of various commercial venture capital institutions [1]. Commercial venture capital has become an important intermediary in the financial market, providing the financial support needed for young high-tech companies to grow and playing an important role in promoting the growth and innovation of start-up companies [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Effective Venture Capital Market Development Concept

“…The subfactors from the factor group "macroeconomic conditions" are "high GDP growth rate" and "high export level". These subfactors are also admitted to be important for VC market in previous studies [49,66].…”

“…The most important subfactor from the factor group "environment for innovation" is "high level of technology innovation". This subfactor is admitted to also be important for VC market in other unmatured markets [66]. Even open innovation is regarded as a vital part of innovativeness culture; the degree it is used in the VC industry has been vaguely researched before.…”