Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by Chinese firms has received considerable research attention recently (Li, Cui, & Lu, 2014; Lu, Liu, Wright, & Filatotchev, 2014; Xia, Ma, Lu, & Yiu, 2014). In particular, a number of studies have focused on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) involving Chinese firms (Li, Li, & Wang, 2016; Li & Xie, 2013; Xie & Li, 2016; Zhang, Zhou, & Ebbers, 2011). Following Child and Marinova's (2014) suggestion that both the home and host country institutional contexts play important roles in determining M&A activity, Buckley and his colleagues have examined how China's ‘Go Global’ policy influences the location choices in Chinese acquisitions and also how host country political risks affect such activities (Buckley et al., 2016). They looked into national political and legal conditions (see also Meyer, Estrin, Bhaumik, & Peng, 2009), and also examined a large dataset on China's cross-border M&As. Much of the previous work in this area has focused on greenfield investments (Duanmu, 2012; Kang & Jiang, 2012), so the work of Buckley et al. (2016) has broken new ground.

We propose an integrative model on how contextual distance influences the learning process and performance of international strategic alliances (ISAs). We argue that contextual distance increases knowledge diversity but decreases knowledge exchange between the alliance partners, which has implications for the alliance's knowledge creation and performance. A meta-analysis of 46 empirical studies published between 1990 and 2013 dealing with Sino-foreign collaborations in China revealed that contextual distance showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with alliance performance. Proxies for partners’ contextual experience, for example, the length of an alliance's operation in China, the foreign partners’ in-country experiences, and ISAs’ location in a more developed Chinese region, moderate the learning processes. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.