Local versus global: Corporate governance practices in Chinese domestic and overseas companies

Abstract

Globalization has provided Chinese companies with a great opportunity to access international capital markets through various channels such as overseas listing and overseas incorporation. This movement has led to three main sets of corporate governance regimes that are applicable, respectively, to overseas issuers including H shares (listed in Hong Kong), red chips (incorporated out of Mainland China and listed in Hong Kong) and N shares (listed on the New York Stock Exchange). In various governance dimensions, these regimes differ from those subject to Chinese domestic issuers of A/B shares. Although the trend of implementing more internationalized corporate governance in China is clearly defined by Chinese authorities, the domestic issuers are obliged to comply with several governance regulations designed specifically to account for the current transitional Chinese economy. For investors, it is then interesting to reveal, to which extent, in which aspects, Chinese corporate governance has been or will be internationalized, in order to better understand the uniqueness of Chinese business and governance environments. Our study contributes to such questions.