This paper assesses the impacts of R&D, export and the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on Chinese manufacturing productivity based on a panel data on more than 10,000 indigenous and foreign-invested firms for the period 1998-2001. Indigenous Chinese firms are found to significantly benefit from their own export activities and R&D spillovers. Given some specific characteristics of China as a transition economy, OECD invested firms produce strong negative intra-industry spillovers on indigenous Chinese firms across regions but strong positive intra- and inter-industry spillovers within the same regions. Overseas Chinese firms from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan exert positive intra-industry productivity spillovers only. The robustness analysis suggests that different measures of FDI could lead to different results. Our findings have important implications for both business managers and policy makers.