Appraisal and cluster analysis on regional investment climate of mainland China

Many Chinese scholars have studied on regional investment climate (RIC) recently. However, few of them applied cluster analysis on regional investment climate of mainland China. We first set an appraisal index system about regional investment climate of 31 Chinese provinces (include 4 municipalities directly under the central government and 5 autonomous regions), and then on the basic data from Chinese statistical yearbook 2005 we start our analyzing work. The main analysis tool we use is statistical software-SPSS. Principal analysis is used to deal with the 43 indexes in the appraisal, system. Cluster analysis is also adopted to make further study on the conclusion of principal analysis. As to the cluster analysis result, we distribute 31 regions into 5 categories with respectively analysis. In the end, we give some advices on how to improve RIC for the regions in each category, which are meaningful references for both decision makers and investors.