Chinese firms are achieving great competitive advantage in global market by undertaking a series of outward foreign investments and exporting reliable products throughout the world. As a result, several prominent firms come under global spotlight. Although Chinese firms are trying to make the best of global market potentials, the institutional differences between foreign markets and domestic markets would cause uncertainties and risks, leading challenges to them when choosing appropriate international strategy, such as making decision in foreign market entry mode, establishment mode, and investment flow. However, due to different theoretical lens, context dissimilarity as well as the selective emphases of analysis in prior literature, there still exist mixed findings concerning the effects of institutional distance on entry mode choice. In order to address the impact of institutional distance on the choice of foreign entry mode, this paper used 772 foreign investment projects during the period from 2008 to 2012, which were undertaken by 280 Chinese listed firms. The data was obtained and refined from MOFCOM (Ministry of Commerce). After compiling the firm-level data from CSMAR (China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database) and country-level data from World Bank, ICRG (International Country Risk Guide), etc., we employed the logistic regression to examine the role of formal and informal institutional distance. The empirical findings show: (1) the larger the magnitude of formal institutional distance between home and host country, the more likelihood firm establishes wholly-owned subsidiary(WOS); however, the larger the magnitude of informal institutional distance, the more likelihood firm chooses to establish joint venture(JV) with local partners. (2) WhenChinse firms choose a host country with better institutional environment, the positive relationship between formal institutional distance and the choice of WOS will be enhanced. (3) When parent firm accumulates certain host country experience, the positive relationship between informal institutional distance and the choice of JV will be weakened. Based on above empirical results, this paper provides rich insights to prior literature. Firstly, we integrate the institution theory and transaction cost theory, delimitate different characteristics as well as the influencing mechanisms of formal and informal institutional distance on foreign entry mode choice, which offers solution to past inconsistent results. Secondly, we introduce the direction of formal institutional distance along with the magnitude dimension, and pay attention to the asymmetric institutional situations of host countries based on China as a reference point, which offers a better understanding of how institutional distance influence entry mode. In addition, we also consider the role of host country experience in the relationship between informal institutional distance and entry mode, and emphasize the significance of firm capabilities which could be learned and accumulated through past foreign operations.