Data on spatiotemporal patterns of the foundation of Japanese companies in China from 1980–2016

This data article provides spatiotemporal patterns of the foundation of Japanese companies in China. The data for companies in the food manufacturing, wholesaling, and service industries were collected from published lists of Chinese companies founded through the investment of Japanese companies. The data are provided in a matrix heatmap format, a two-dimensional visualization of data using color to represent the magnitude of two variables: year of foundation and area in China where the company is located.


a b s t r a c t
This data article provides spatiotemporal patterns of the foundation of Japanese companies in China. The data for companies in the food manufacturing, wholesaling, and service industries were collected from published lists of Chinese companies founded through the investment of Japanese companies. The data are provided in a matrix heatmap format, a two-dimensional visualization of data using color to represent the magnitude of two variables: year of foundation and area in China where the company is located.

Experimental factors
The number of companies were accumulated from a published list.

Experimental features
The number of companies that are included in the matrix heatmap comprise two variables: year of foundation and area in China where the company is located.

Data source location
China Data accessibility Data are presented within this article.

Value of the data
The data in a heatmap format concomitantly visualize two company variables (year of foundation and area in China where the company is located), allowing researchers to capture an overview of the trends in each industry, and to compare the trends specific to each industry.
The data can be used by researchers to examine the effects of historical events, geographical features, and Chinese policies on industrial exchanges between countries for Japan and other countries.
The data can aid discussion on the business partnership between China and Japan.

Data
To date, there have been four booms in Japanese companies' investments in China: in 1985China: in -1990China: in , 1991China: in -1999China: in , and 2000China: in -2007, and after 2008 [1][2][3]. Each boom is tightly related to factors such as historical events, geographical features, and Chinese policies. However, previous reports show line or bar graphs indicating annual amounts of investments or numbers of companies founded. The graphs do not include spatial trends, an important factor related to historical events and geographical features. Heatmaps are often employed to represent variable data, including spatiotemporal factors such as gene expression experiments [4,5]. Hence, we employed the heatmap format (Figs. 1-6 (Figs. 2, 4, 6).

Design
According to a previous report, the food industry was included in all booms of Japanese companies' investments in China [2]. Here, we chose the companies in the food manufacture, wholesale, and service sectors, as food industry and its related industries.

Source of data
The number of Chinese companies founded through investment of Japanese companies was collected from references of the 21st Century China Research Institute [6,7] that lists such data, including established year and location, on Japanese companies investing to build Chinese companies.

Heatmap preparing
The number of such companies was obtained from the list in the source, and filled into a Microsoft Excel for Mac worksheet (version 15.31; Redmond, WA, USA) as shown in Figs. 1-6. The colors of the cells were determined by the color scale option in Excel, in which the minimum number is indicated in white, and the maximum number is indicated in red. The sum of each year and area was calculated using the auto sum option in Excel. The color scale option was separately applied to a line or row of cells for sum.