Zijian Pan Yufeng Hu ^* Rongrong Xu ^*

• Tongling University, Tongling, China

China has significantly increased its foreign direct investment (FDI). Although these investments help to boost global development, their impacts on the environment are still controversial and deserve careful investigation. This paper uses the super-efficiency SBM model to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of 123 host countries of China's FDI. On this basis, we adopt the two-step system GMM and dynamic panel threshold effect model to analyze the impact of China's FDI on the GTFP of host countries. The research results show that: (1) The impact of China's FDI on the GTFP of host countries is mainly through green technology efficiency. Its impact is inhibitory, followed by a promotional one, with the latter being significantly larger than the former. (2) There is no evidence of the "pollution haven effect" associated with China's FDI. In fact, for countries with lower environmental regulations, China's FDI promotes the growth of GTFP more effectively. (3) The innovation level of host countries moderates the relationship between China's FDI and GTFP growth. For host countries with stronger innovation level, their GTFP growth can be enhanced to a greater extent by China's FDI. innovation capacity enables better absorption of advanced technologies introduced by foreign investors (Desbordes and Franssen, 2019) and facilitates the dissemination and diffusion of these technologies within host countries (Hu et al., 2021). Additionally, FDI enterprises investing in host countries with higher levels of innovation often encounter greater competitive pressures, motivating them to improve their green production efficiency (Xiao et al., 2022).In recent years, there has been an increasing attention paid to China's rapidly growing FDI from scholars. Relevant studies on China's FDI reveal that it is insensitive to the political stability and governance levels of host countries (Chen et al., 2018), but it tends to target these countries with abundant natural resources or advanced technology (Ramasamy et al., 2012;Yao et al., 2017). Research on the outward FDI behavior of listed companies in China demonstrate that China's FDI exhibits reverse technology spillovers, significantly enhancing domestic GTFP. However, this enhancement is influenced by the heterogeneity of investment sectors, countries, and entities (Zhu