Chinese Corporate Governance Research Articles

Chinese corporate governance research over the last decade (2014 - 2023)

This paper aims to summarize the academic research trend of corporate governance in China from 2014 to 2023. We collect papers published in the journals included in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) and Association of Business School (ABS) rating above 3 stars. We analyze keywords, journal distribution, authors, and other information to understand the trend of Chinese corporate governance research and publications. On this basis, we carry out bibliometric analysis to summarize the hot and emerging topics of Chinese corporate governance research over the past ten years. Finally, we propose possible future research prospects.

Research on the Stakeholder Model in Chinese Corporate Governance: Normative Foundations and Empirical Landscape

Research on the Stakeholder Model in Chinese Corporate Governance: Normative Foundations and Empirical Landscape

Does CEO Compensation matter Aggressive Tax Planning in China: Evidence from Chinese Ownership Properties

This study aims to explore the impact of CEO compensation on aggressive tax planning (ATP) in China's A-share listed companies, and to reveal the moderating effect of firm size on CEO compensation and ATP. This study uses panel data analysis to explore the relationship between CEO compensation and ATP in China. From the perspective of listed companies in China, the largest developing market, during 2017-2022, the study provides evidence that CEO compensation is positively correlated with ATP, and that this relationship is also moderated by firm size. This study recognizes the crucial role of CEO compensation in the ATP of Chinese listed companies, and fills the gap of previous studies by studying the impact of CEO compensation. At the same time, the novel introduction of firm size as a moderating variable also highlights its effectiveness in Chinese corporate governance. The findings have important implications for participants in China's listed companies, managers' labor markets, and tax regulators. The unavailability of data, the sampling selection of companies, and the impact of focusing only on CEOs without considering other executives in the sample constitute limitations of this study. Although these limitations may weaken the explanatory power of the model, they set the avenue for future research.

Legal Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Directors under the Background of the Revision of China's New Company Law

With the rapid development of technology, artificial intelligence technology has gradually been valued by the public and applied in various industries. At the level of business and corporate governance, there are also examples of AI directors participating in corporate governance internationally, providing us with space to explore the application of AI directors in Chinese corporate governance and decision-making. In December 2023, China promulgated a newly revised Company Law, and this article aims to explore how China responds to the issue of artificial intelligence directors in the context of the new Company Law. Specifically, it manifests as the authorization of artificial intelligence directors as auxiliary functions, the expansion and modification of the obligations of natural person directors, and the issue of responsibility assumption caused by artificial intelligence directors.

Party organization embedded and corporate internal control level

Embedding Party elements in corporate governance is not only a characteristic of Chinese corporate governance but also plays a positive role in improving the quality of internal control in Chinese enterprises. The results of this study show that the embedding of enterprise Party organizations can enhance the level of corporate internal control, and this impact is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises and in companies where the CEO has higher social capital. The findings of this study have theoretical significance and practical value in fully leveraging the leading role of enterprise Party organizations and promoting the high-quality development of Chinese enterprises.

The Evergrande Story: A Look into Chinese Corporate Law and the Redefinition of Privately Owned Enterprises and Their Relationship to State-Owned Enterprises in the Chinese Economy

Abstract In December 2021, Evergrande, the second-largest private property developer in China, defaulted on its debt and became the most indebted firm in the world with over $300 billion in liabilities. Its default marked the beginning of a real estate crisis in China, one that is still in the process of being resolved. The Chinese State, through its State-owned enterprises (SOEs), has played an enormous role in mitigating the crisis. Had it not, it is very unlikely that Evergrande would remain in existence today, with huge ramifications for Chinese society and the national economy. This article undertakes a case study of Evergrande, a privately owned enterprise (POE) that exhibits SOE characteristics, to shed further light on the web of interactions between large enterprises in China. It reconsiders how ‘private’ some POEs are in the Chinese economy and argues that, at a certain level, both SOEs and POEs operate in a co-dependent manner. Not only does this challenge the conventional distinction between SOEs and POEs, but it also has wide-ranging implications for corporate governance in China. Indeed, SOEs find themselves having to bail out POEs and are exerting control over POEs in which they have no equity stake. SOEs are thus financially burdened with protecting all large enterprises including POEs, whereas POEs can operate in an unregulated fashion and receive rents from their close ties to SOEs. Altogether, this article’s analysis showcases the operation of various themes of Chinese corporate governance and contributes to the existing literature seeking to understand the unique role of the State in Chinese enterprises.

Change in company leadership, subordinate executive team restructuring, and investment efficiency

AbstractUnder the Chinese corporate governance model, the change of “leader” is one of the most significant occurrences for a company, and there is a strong relationship between “leaders”(chairman and CEO) and the executive team under them. Using data from listed A‐share businesses in China from 2007 to 2018, this study evaluates the effects of leaders' changes on investment efficiency and the effects of subordinate executive team restructuring caused by “leadership” change on investment efficiency. The findings reveal that the change of “leaders” significantly reduces company's investment efficiency, and the greater the degree of restructuring of subordinate executives caused by the change of “leaders”, the greater the negative impact on the company's investment efficiency. Nevertheless, the successor leader with a financial background can well mitigate the negative impact of the subordinate executive team restructuring on investment efficiency. In further analysis, we discover that the subordinate executive reorganization results in both overinvestment and underinvestment. However, state‐owned enterprises are more resilient to the damaging impacts of organizational shocks. Additionally, a good internal and external regulatory mechanism can mitigate the negative impact of the subordinate executive teams restructuring on investment efficiency. In conclusion, this study provides scientific support for improving executive team management and optimizing investment decisions for companies.

Research on the Influence Mechanism of Chinese Corporate Governance and Accounting Information Quality

Ownership and management rights are gradually separated in the process of the development of modern enterprises, and the modern financial and accounting system comes into being. Accounting information system is an indispensable part of modern enterprises, corporate governance structure will be organically combined within the enterprise, the two influence each other and interact with each other. True, reliable and efficient accounting information system can fully improve the operational efficiency of the company, and the structure of corporate governance is effectively optimized. On the contrary, the accounting information system of fraud and information distortion is very likely to make the operators seek improper interests, make the stakeholders bear huge losses, and the financial situation of the company deteriorate.

Institutional Investors in China: Corporate Governance and Policy Channeling in the Market Within the State

The extraordinary rise of China’s economy has made understanding Chinese corporate governance an issue of global importance. A rich literature has developed analyzing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role as China’s largest controlling shareholder and the impact that this has on Chinese corporate governance. However, the CCP’s role as the architect—and direct and indirect controller—of institutional investors in China has been largely overlooked in the legal literature. This Article aims to take the first step in filling this gap in the literature by drawing on Chinese sources and fresh hand-collected empirical, interview, and case study evidence to analyze the meteoric rise of institutional investors in China. It provides a taxonomy of institutional investors in China and reveals how the market for institutional investors has grown and has become increasingly “atomized” as different types of institutional investors have proliferated. The Article reveals how the CCP has actively and gradually promoted the growth of domestic institutional investors, in terms of types and size, through the relaxation of policies and law reforms to improve corporate governance and stabilize the stock market, while limiting the influence of foreign institutional investors. It further analyzes all the Activist Campaigns undertaken by institutional investors in China and maps the network of government bodies, regulations, and tactics that the CCP has developed to directly and indirectly control State-Owned Institutional Investors (SOIIs) and Private-Owned Institutional Investors (POIIs) for the purpose of policy channeling. This Article concludes by taking a step back and briefly considering what this examination of institutional investors tells us about China’s unique form of capitalism and system of corporate governance. It suggests that the rise of institutional investors in China has been strategically developed in a way to reinforce the CCP’s ultimate control over the financial system. However, contrary to what some conceptions of “state capitalism” may suggest, the CCP does not micro-manage institutional investors on a day-to-day basis. Rather, institutional investors normally function according to free-market forces and increasingly perform an important corporate governance role—with the CCP using its policy channeling in a targeted way to stabilize the market in times of crisis, execute important legal and market reforms, and to maintain calm in society during critical political events: what this Article termed as the “market within the state” for institutional investors in China.

The impact of corporate governance measures on firm performance: the influences of managerial overconfidence

The paper aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) measures on firm performance and the role of managerial behavior on the relationship of corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance using a Chinese listed firm. This study used CG mechanisms measures internal and external corporate governance, which is represented by independent board, dual board leadership, ownership concentration as measure of internal CG and debt financing and product market competition as an external CG measures. Managerial overconfidence was measured by the corporate earnings forecasts. Firm performance is measured by ROA and TQ. To address the study objective, the researcher used panel data of 11,634 samples of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2018. To analyze the proposed hypotheses, the study employed system Generalized Method of Moments estimation model. The study findings showed that ownership concentration and product market competition have a positive significant relationship with firm performance measured by ROA and TQ. Dual leadership has negative relationship with TQ, and debt financing also has a negative significant association’s with both measures of firm performance ROA and TQ. Moreover, the empirical results also showed managerial overconfidence negatively influences the relationship of board independence, dual leadership, and ownership concentration with firm performance. However, managerial overconfidence positively moderates the impact of debt financing on firm performance measured by Tobin’s Q and negative influence on debt financing and operational firm performance relationship. These findings have several contributions: first, the study extends the literature on the relationship between CG and a firm’s performance by using the Chinese CG structure. Second, this study provides evidence that how managerial behavioral bias interacts with CG mechanisms to affect firm performance, which has not been studied in previous literature. Therefore, the results of this study contribute to the theoretical perspective by providing an insight into the influencing role of managerial behavior in the relationship between CG practices and firm performance in an emerging markets economy. Hence, the empirical result of the study provides important managerial implications for the practice and is important for policy-makers seeking to improve corporate governance in the emerging market economy.

The Communist Party Committee and corporate takeovers

Existing empirical studies on Chinese corporate governance ignore the role of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) over which it has direct control. This study examines a unique corporate governance mechanism in Chinese SOEs: the co-existence of party committee and board of directors, and considers the monitoring effects of the party committee on the value creation of Chinese state-owned acquiring firms. I show that acquisitions with their own party committees create significantly higher market value for acquiring firms, especially for acquirers with fewer external monitoring mechanisms, while value creation remains in long-term, post-event periods. I further document that the collective decision can contain the “empire building” of mangers and reduce the premium is the source of this value creation, while the findings remain unchanged after controlling for endogeneities.

China Stock Market Listed Firms’ Governance and Innovation Outcomes

This study examines the corporate governance and innovation relationship of China listed firms. It aims to contribute to the literature on corporate innovation antecedents, corporate governance of Chinese firms, and its impact on innovation outcomes. Relying on agency and resource-dependence theories to understand corporate governance elements, and patents granted as a measure of successful corporate innovation, this study utilizes a quantitative research methodology and a longitudinal design to leverage data collected from the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the Chinese Research Data Services Platform as well as the China Stock Market & Accounting Database. The study sample includes 3,337 firms with a total 13,182 firm-year observations from the year 2010 to 2019. A better understanding of Chinese corporate governance practices in light of the country’s Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) recent reforms is needed, especially considering the necessity to derive a corporate governance theory from China for Chinese firms that has emerged in the literature. We find that board independence is the corporate governance component with the highest predictive significance on innovation, followed by CEO duality, and that board size is not a significant innovation predictor. We also find high incidence of CEO duality among China listed firms.

CURRENT STATUS AND TRENDS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE RESEARCH IN CHINA

This article introduces the development process, important time nodes and important events of Chinese corporate governance. Based on the search results of the CNKI database, the number of annual publications, research institutions, and keywords are counted, showing the current research status. Then it shows the main content of the current research and looks forward to the future research trend of corporate governance in China.

Institutional Investors in China: Corporate Governance and Policy Channeling in the Market Within the State

The extraordinary rise of China’s economy has made understanding Chinese corporate governance an issue of global importance. A rich literature has developed analyzing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) role as China’s largest controlling shareholder and the impact that this has on Chinese corporate governance. However, the CCP’s role as the architect – and direct and indirect controller – of institutional investors in China has been largely overlooked in the comparative corporate law literature. This Article aims to take the first step in filling this gap in the literature by drawing on Chinese sources and fresh hand-collected empirical, interview, and case study evidence to analyze the meteoric rise of institutional investors in China. It provides a taxonomy of institutional investors in China and reveals how as the market for institutional investors has grown it has become increasingly “atomized” as different types of institutional investors have proliferated. The Article reveals how the CCP has actively and gradually promoted the growth of domestic institutional investors, in terms of types and size, through relaxation of policies and law reforms to improve corporate governance and stabilize the stock market, while limiting the influence of foreign institutional investors. It further analyzes all the Activist Campaigns undertaken by institutional investors in China and maps the network of government bodies, regulations, and tactics that the CCP has developed to directly and indirectly control State-Owned Institutional Investors (SOIIs) and Private-Owned Institutional Investors (POIIs) for the purpose of policy channeling. This Article concludes by taking a step back and briefly considering what this examination of institutional investors tells us about China’s unique form of capitalism and system of corporate governance. It suggests that the rise of institutional investors in China has been strategically developed in a way to reinforce the CCP’s ultimate control over the financial system. However, contrary to what some conceptions of “state capitalism” may suggest, the CCP does not micro-manage institutional investors on a day-to-day basis. Rather, institutional investors normally function according to free-market forces and increasingly perform an important corporate governance role – with the CCP using its policy channeling in a targeted way to stabilize the market in times of crisis, execute important legal and market reforms, and to maintain calm in society during critical political events: what this Article coin’s the “market within the state” for institutional investors in China.

Party Building or Noisy Signaling? The Contours of Political Conformity in Chinese Corporate Governance

AbstractWe examine responses by Chinese firms to a party-building policy launched by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2015 to reform China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The policy requires ...

A more efficient derivative action system in China: challenges and opportunities through corporate governance theory

The derivative action is an exception to the rule in Foss v Harbottle1 that was introduced with high expectations during a Chinese company law (CCL) reform that came into effect in 2006. It is vital to combat the abuse of derivative action in China, a country with an emerging corporate governance model, a weak legal system and inefficient enforcement measures. This article examines several deficiencies in derivative actions, with the purpose of arguing for a more effective and positive derivative action rule for the benefit of shareholders and their companies, and also for the development of CCL and the reconstruction of the Chinese corporate governance system. Corporate governance theories will be discussed as theoreticalsupports for a more efficient and enforceable derivative action system in China.

Party Building or Noisy Signaling? The Contours of Political Conformity in Chinese Corporate Governance

We examine responses by Chinese firms to a “party-building” policy launched by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2015 to reform China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The policy requires SOEs to follow a model template of charter amendments to formalize and elevate the role of the CCP in their corporate governance. In the period 2015-18, about ten percent of publicly traded SOEs failed to follow the mandatory policy, while nearly six percent of privately owned enterprises (POEs) complied even though they were not subject to the policy. We find wide variation in the provisions adopted within and across firm ownership types, with SOE adoptions apparently affected by their ownership structures and exposure to capital market forces, and POE adoptions associated with political connections. Our findings highlight the complex contours of political conformity in Chinese firms and raise questions about the trajectory of Chinese corporate governance reform and foreign investment activity.

The Law and Practice of Shareholder Inspection Rights: A Comparative Analysis of China and the U.S.

Shareholder inspection rights allow a shareholder to access the relevant documents of the company in which they hold an interest, so as to address the problem of information asymmetry and reduce the agency costs inherent in the corporate structure. While Chinese corporate governance and American corporate governance face different sets of agency cost problems, this paper shows that shareholder inspection rights play an important role in both China and the U.S.. On the books, while shareholder inspection rights in both countries are broadly similar, there are some important differences on such issues as the proper purpose requirement. Our empirical analysis further sheds light on how inspection rights operate on the ground. We find that many inspection cases are filed in both China and in Delaware. These cases are resolved by the courts relatively quickly. While inspection rights in both countries are frequently used as a pre-suit discovery device, the types of subsequent litigation that can be filed in each country are quite different. Efforts are made to explain, and draw implications from, the similarities and differences on shareholder inspection rights between the two countries.

Does regulation matter? Changes in corporate governance in China and its impact on financial market growth: an empirical analysis (1995-2014)

PurposeOver the past two decades, China’s stock market has experienced rapid growth. This period has seen the transplantation of many “OECD principles of corporate governance” into the Chinese corporate regulatory framework. These regulations are dominated by shareholder values. This paper aims to discover whether there is a causal relationship between the changes in China’s corporate governance and financial market growth.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses data from 1995-2014 to create a robust corporate index by looking at 52 variables and a financial index out of five financial market parameters. Subsequently, data are subject to a panel regression analysis, with the financial market index as the outcome variable, corporate governance index explanatory variable and a variety of economics, social and technological control variables.FindingsThis paper concludes that changes in corporate regulation have in fact had no statistically significant impact on China’s financial market growth, which must therefore be attributed to other factors.Originality/valueThe study is the first in the context of Chinese corporate governance impact studies to use Bayesian methodology to analyse a panel dataset. It uses OECD principles as the anchor to provide a clear picture of evolution of corporate governance for a 20-year period which is also longer than previous studies.

Determinants of Board Composition and Corporate Governance in Chinese Enterprises Since Reforms Began: A Comparison of Controlling Shareholders

This study focuses on the determinants of board size and board independence during an economic transition in China. It contributes to the body of Chinese corporate governance studies by applying the most comprehensive analytical framework to the periods before and after the split-share structure reform. Both static and dynamic estimation methods have been used. Overall, the study found that Chinese board size and independence are jointly determined by the scope of operation, cost and benefit of monitoring, CEO’s influence and other governance factors. Among these factors, the government was the most important player in constituting corporate boards before the split-share structure reform; after the reform, board independence became more important than other governance factors. In addition, when constituting corporate boards, private and market-oriented state enterprises are more concerned about cost than are government-controlled enterprises.