Building the new development pattern of dual circulation is the major strategic deployment put forward by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, but the current academic circles lack understanding of how to facilitate the dual circulation from the micro enterprise level. Enterprises are the micro market entities of economic cycle, and facilitating domestic and international dual circulation cannot be separated from the deep participation of enterprises. This paper discusses the interactive relationship between domestic circulation and international circulation from the perspective of enterprises, attaching importance to the two-way enabling mechanism between the domestic market (domestic circulation) and the internationalization of Chinese enterprises (international circulation at the enterprise level). It explores the following questions: How does the domestic market enable the internationalization of Chinese enterprises? In turn, how does the internationalization of Chinese enterprises enable the domestic market?
Using the exploratory multi-case study method, this paper takes Geely, Haier, Topsun and Great Star as the research objects. The research finds that: Firstly, the domestic market not only has an important role for enabling the internationalization of Chinese enterprises, but also is the basic guarantee for enterprises to participate in the international circulation, including institutional enablement, factor endowment enablement and market enablement. Secondly, the internationalization of Chinese enterprises in turn has an enabling effect on the domestic market, including the micro level (enabling the domestic market development of enterprises, such as technology enablement and brand enablement) and the macro level (enabling the domestic economic cycle, such as promoting the development of relevant industries, promoting domestic consumption upgrading). Thirdly, due to the different internationalization modes and degrees and the proportion of domestic and international businesses, there are also differences in the modes, intensity and stages of their two-way enablement. Finally, from a dynamic perspective, the two-way enabling path between the domestic market and the internationalization of Chinese enterprises includes three stages: domestic market enabling enterprise internationalization → enterprise internationalization enabling domestic market in turn → two-way enablement of a higher level. For Chinese multinational enterprises that pay equal attention to both domestic and international markets and have a higher degree of internationalization, the two-way enabling pattern of a higher level has been gradually formed.
This paper has the following theoretical contributions: Firstly, it reveals the two-way enabling mechanism between domestic and international circulation from the perspective of micro enterprises, opening up the micro black box of interaction between internal and external circulation, which is helpful for providing a micro foundation for the macro dual-circulation research. Secondly, it highlights the strategic and specific role of Chinese enterprises (especially Chinese multinational enterprises) in establishing the new development pattern of dual circulation. Thirdly, different from the traditional international business research which focuses on the one-way relationship between the domestic market and the internationalization of enterprises, it focuses on the two-way influence mechanism between the two, which helps to deepen the existing research.