Abstract: The experience accumulated in the process of enterprises' overseas investment has an important impact on the survival performance of their overseas subsidiaries. This paper uses the overseas investment data of Chinese listed companies from 2002 to 2012 to study the impact of the experience in the process of enterprises' overseas investment on the survival performance of overseas subsidiaries. The empirical results show that there is no significant relationship between the success experience and the survival performance of overseas subsidiaries, while the learning effect between the failure experience and the survival performance of overseas subsidiaries is significant, showing an U-shaped relationship, and the heterogeneity of investors will weaken the U-shaped relationship between the failure experience and the survival performance of subsidiaries. Diversified equity investment structure, large capital scale and diversified host country location choice will weaken the U-shaped relationship between failure experience and subsidiary survival performance.

Key words: success experience, failure experience, subsidiary performance, heterogeneity