The RhodiumGroup (RHG)

The RhodiumGroup (RHG) is a private research firm that
tracks Chinese FDI mainly in the US and publishes its
report as the China Investment Monitor (CIM). But it does
also have some publications that refer to Europe.

These include the study Chinese FDI in Europe and Germany. Pre-
paring for a newera of Chinese capital, published in 2015
together with the Mercator Institute for China Studies
(MERCIS) (Hanemann and Huotari 2015). The study uses
data collected by RHG “on Chinese direct investment trans-
actions in Europe [ …] .

It covers acquisitions and greenfield
proj ects by ultimately Chinese-owned companies in the
28 member states of the European Union” (ibid. 52). The
minimumvalue of the transactions contained in the data-
base is €1 million. The data can be broken down by “indus-
try, modes of entry, geographical spread, and ownership”
(ibid. ).

The data collected is based on commercial data-
bases, newspaper reports, reports filed with regulatory
agencies, other publicly available information, and reports
provided by industry contacts. The definition of FDI aligns
with that used by the OECD, as discussed above.

However,the RHG data cannot be compared with national FDI statis-
tics due to the divergent data collection methods used.