A review of the internationalization of Chinese enterprises Ilan Alon 1 & John Anderson 2 & Ziaul Haque Munim 1 & Alice Ho 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This article reviews the scholarly research on the internationalization of Chinese enterprises (ICE) through bibliometric citation analysis. We do so through a data visual- ization technique and analysis of 206 articles which are authored by 382 scholars in 72 different journals published between 2003 and 2016. The results reveal four research streams in the context of ICE: (1) testing traditional FDI theory, (2) location choice, (3) entry mode choice, and (4) drivers and motivations of internationalization. While interna- tional business (IB) journals, such as the Journal of World Business, the Journal of International Business Studies, and International Business Review , have taken a lead role in pushing the ICE literature stream forward, geographically focused general management journals, such as the Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Management & Organization Review , have also made a singular contribution. The impact of perspective, in terms of author and institution affiliation, on the literature set is also examined. Finally, issues related to data, methodological rigor and theoretical underpinnings are highlighted. To advance the ICE literature, we proposed a holistic framework of drivers and motivations of Chinese outward FDI and present some promising future research areas. Keywords Bibliometricanalysis . Outward FDI . Internationalization . Literaturereview . Citation map . China . Emerging markets multinationals (EMMs) . Meta-analysis . Dragon multinationals Asia Pac J Manag https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-018-9597-5 * Ilan Alon Ilan.alon@uia.no John Anderson John.r.anderson@uni.edu Ziaul Haque Munim Ziaul.h.munim@uia.no Alice Ho Alice-Ho@live.no 1 School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway 2 College of Business Administration, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA