Abstract: In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has introduced a large number of foreign direct investment (FDI), which not only increased the capital supply and labor demand, but also promoted China’s economic growth and development. The report of the 19th National Congress pointed out that China’s economy has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage. In order to explore whether FDI will affect our country’s economy to develop high quality, based on provincial panel data from 2003 to 2016, from the economic fundamentals, the achievements of social development and ecological environment in three dimensions, the Index DEA model is adopted, the high quality and economic development Index are constructed, and then the panel quantile regression is used to explore the impact of FDI on the high-quality development of the economy. It is found that FDI can have a significant positive effect on the high-quality development of the economy in the central and western regions, and can promote the high-quality development of the local economy, while it has an opposite effect on the eastern region. The panel segmentation results show that FDI has an uncertain impact on the high-quality development of regional economy under the segmentation of 10%-30%, while FDI has a significant positive impact on the high-quality development of regional economy under the segmentation of 40%-80%.This will provide reference for studying the high-quality development of China’s regional economy, and provide enlightenment for local governments to reasonably introduce foreign direct investment and realize the transformation from the stage of economic growth to the stage of high-quality economic development.

Key words: high-quality economic development; foreign direct investment; index DEA; panel quantile regression