China-HQ green FDI readiness / Method appendix
Back to the story

HQ classification rule

Purpose. Specifies the China-HQ filter applied to the source FDI panel, documents the cases in which source-panel HQ differs from corporate HQ of record, and reports cell-level sensitivity to a documented-exclusions screen.

Rule

The station's FDI panel filters records on an exact string match against the source-panel Company Country (HQ) field:

Company Country (HQ) == "China"

The filter is applied at ingest time. No control-based, ownership-share, beneficial-owner, or analyst-classification logic is layered on top. The rule was chosen for tractability and reproducibility; a control-based rule would require firm-level beneficial-ownership research beyond the scope of this analysis.

Audit

A firm-level audit applied a curated classification table to all 427 records in the panel under three rules: rule_panel (status quo), rule_documented_exclusions (panel minus documented non-China-HQ flags), and rule_strict (only confirmed mainland-China-HQ records, excluding unverified firms). The audit assigns 81.5% of disclosed capex ($172.7B of $211.8B) to a specific HQ status; the remaining unverified residual is 98 records totaling $39.2B across 77 firms. Unlike the pre-refresh tail (then all under about $10M each and immaterial), this residual is now material in aggregate, but it is concentrated in large mainland-Chinese firms not yet entered in the curated table (the largest is TBEA at $11.5B), a curation-completeness gap rather than foreign-HQ capital. It leaves the documented-exclusions screen used for narrative claims unaffected.

Status Records Disclosed capex ($M) Firms
strict_hq_ok 310 152,622 134
hk_offshore_china 1 11,500 1
control_linked_non_hq 11 7,115 7
jv_with_non_china_state 3 1,006 1
ambiguous 4 417 2
unverified 98 39,166 77

Documented non-strict cases

Control-linked, non-China HQ (7 firms, 12 records, $8.0B). Maxeon Solar Technologies: Singapore HQ; TCL Industries (China) is parent of the majority shareholder; 1 record, $1.0B (USA/Solar Albuquerque). Envision AESC: Yokohama HQ; Envision Group (China) acquired the business in 2018; 4 records, $3.09B across ESP/Battery, FRA/Battery, GBR/Battery, JPN/Battery. Geely-controlled subsidiaries with non-mainland HQ: Volvo Cars (Gothenburg), LEVC (Coventry), Polestar (UK / Gothenburg), Proton (Selangor, 49.9% Geely stake); 6 records, $3.23B, all in EV (outside Solar+Battery scope). Canadian Solar: Guelph, Ontario HQ; battery-storage subsidiary CSI Solar Storage operates separately from the solar-module business; 1 record, $712M (USA/Battery Shelbyville).

Hong Kong HQ (1 firm, 1 record, $11.5B). Xinyi Glass: Tuen Mun, HKEX-listed, mainland operations dominant but legally outside mainland-PRC jurisdiction; 1 record, $11.5B (IDN/Solar Rempang).

Joint ventures with material non-China-HQ partners (2 firms, 4 records, $6.9B). CATL/Brunp/IBC/Antam: CATL + Brunp mainland-China, IBC and PT Antam are Indonesian state actors; 1 record, $5.9B (IDN/EV, outside scope). SAIC-GM-Wuling: SAIC + Wuling mainland-China, General Motors US; 3 records, $1.0B (IDN/EV, IND/EV, outside scope).

Ambiguous (2 firms, 4 records, $417M). Windrose Technology (dual US/Shanghai) and Leapmotor International (Netherlands-domiciled JV with Stellantis majority stake). Both are EV records outside Solar+Battery scope.

Cell-level sensitivity

Three of the ten narrative-batch cells change disclosed-capex magnitude under documented exclusions, but none cross the $100m FDI-First threshold. Two additional cells in the broader scored panel flip out of FDI-First entirely because their sole China-HQ record was AESC.

Cell Panel ($) Documented ($) Quadrant under documented exclusions
IDN / Solar 17,140 5,640 FDI-First Experiment (Xinyi HK excluded; cell stays)
USA / Battery 4,200 3,488 FDI-First Experiment (Canadian Solar excluded; cell stays)
USA / Solar 1,670 674 FDI-First Experiment (Maxeon excluded; cell stays)
FRA / Battery 920 0 Bypassed / Lagging (AESC was sole China-HQ; PC = 0.003)
JPN / Battery 458 0 Untapped Candidate (AESC was sole; PC = 0.944)

The other seven narrative-batch cells (HUN/Battery, POL/Battery, MEX/Battery, IDN/Battery, VNM/Solar, MYS/Solar, SAU/Solar) do not change because their cell-level capex is dominated by unambiguously mainland-China-HQ firms (CATL, EVE Energy, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, Trina, Longi, Kibing, TCL Zhonghuan).

The aggregate FDI-First Experiment count is 24 cells under both the panel rule and documented exclusions: in the current panel no FDI-First cell loses enough capex to the screen to fall below the $100m threshold. The single factory-stage crossing (Cambodia/Solar, a US-tariff transshipment case rather than indigenous capability) holds under both cuts [1].

References

Markdown source on GitHub