Chinese Corporate Research Articles

Varieties of Digital Capitalism and the US–China Rivalry: The Rise of Competing Technological Spheres

The rise of China as a global high-tech nation is challenging US hegemony. While US tech companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have expanded globally and have integrated most world regions into US-led digital capitalism, China has developed its own variety of digital capitalism. Shielded by the ‘Great Firewall’, Chinese corporations such as Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent have emerged as innovative high-tech companies. Instead of relying on a US-style liberal-internationalized mode of governance, China’s state-managed digital capitalism was domestic market-based. However, since the mid-2010s, Chinese tech companies have emerged as global competitors. In response, both Trump and Biden administrations enacted sanctions and investment controls to ban Chinese companies from the US market while pressuring their allies to follow suit. In this article, we argue that beyond the development of distinct US and Chinese varieties of digital capitalism, two separate digital technological spheres are emerging. After examining these distinct varieties of digital capitalism, it will be investigated how the US have weaponized institutional differences to sanction Chinese digital companies. In a third step, the emergence of a US and Chinese digital technological sphere will be analyzed, with a focus on 5G network equipment.

Research on the effect of multiple credit ratings from the perspective of financial regulatory systems in Chinese bond market.

This paper, starting from the effects of financial regulatory policies, considers the interaction between Chengxin_Moody and Lianhe_Fitch with the dual rating system and the multi-rating system, constructs a new ordered Logit model, and attempts to explore the impact of the Notice, the dual rating system and the multiple rating system on the probability of Chinese corporate bond defaults, rating upgrades, rating downgrades, and the magnitude of credit rating migrations. This study compares the effectiveness of different rating regulatory systems. Using nine thousand two hundred and sixty-two data of Chinese corporate bonds as the research samples. Empirical analysis and robustness test reveal the following findings: (1) The issuance of the Notice has a significant positive effect on the implementation of both the dual rating system and the multiple rating system, with a greater impact on the implementation of the multiple rating system; (2) The issuance of the Notice, along with the dual rating system and the multiple rating system, can all reduce the probability of corporate bond defaults, with the multiple rating system showing the best preventive effect against corporate bond defaults; (3) The dual rating system is more effective in promoting rating agencies to adjust rating behaviors, accurately correcting corporate bond ratings and effectively alleviating the issue of rating inflation. Competition among rating agencies intensifies rating shopping; (4) Under the dual rating system, rating agencies are more likely to expand the magnitude of credit rating upgrades and downgrades, enhancing the differentiation between high-quality corporate bonds and junk corporate bonds; (5) The selection of rating information from Chengxin_Moody and Lianhe_Fitch can appropriately adjust the degree of flexibility or tightening in response to rating regulatory systems. Chengxin_Moody demonstrates a more sensitive reaction compared to Lianhe_Fitch regarding the rating regulatory systems. This study provides valuable references for the formulation and evaluation of the effectiveness of Chinese corporate bond rating regulatory policies.

CSKINet: A multimodal network model integrating conceptual semantic knowledge injection for relation extraction of Chinese corporate reports

Recognizing the associations among entities in corporate reports accurately is crucial for market regulation and policy development. Nevertheless, confronted with massive corporate information, the traditional manual screening approach is cumbersome, struggling to match the demand. Consequently, we propose a multimodal network model incorporating conceptual semantic knowledge injection, CSKINet, for accurately extracting relations from Chinese corporate reports. The essential highlights in the design of the CSKINet model are the following: (1) Integrate the conceptual descriptions of corporations from external resources to construct the semantic knowledge repository of corporate concepts, which provides a solid semantic foundation for the model. (2) Multimodal features are extracted from the documents by various means and corporate conceptual knowledge is integrated into the model representation to enhance the representation capability of the model. (3) The multimodal self-attention mechanism that captures cross-modal associations and the biaffine classifier with Taylor polynomial loss function that optimizes training iterations further improve the learning efficiency and prediction accuracy. The results on the real corporate report dataset show that our proposed model can more accurately extract the relations from Chinese corporate reports compared to other baseline models, where the F1 score reaches 85.76%.

The Respective Relationship Between Environmental, Social, Governance and Financial Performance

Based on data from most A-listed Chinese corporations from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database in 2023, this study examines the respective influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance on a corporations financial performance. By utilizing Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models, the study regards return on equity (ROE) as the dependent variable and E, S, and G scores as the independent variable. It delves into the individual contributions of each ESG category to provide investors with a more detailed framework for making investment decisions and offer corporate executors insights into policy implementation to improve profitability. Ultimately, aiming to support both investors and corporate leaders in their efforts to improve financial outcomes through targeted ESG initiatives, this research indicates that among three factors, the governance performance of a corporation can, to the most extent, enhance financial performance, and thereby encourages corporations to prioritize governance in their ESG strategies.

Environmental, social, and governance performance: The role of Chinese employee stock ownership plans

The challenges of global warming, resource depletion, and environmental protection require immediate action from corporations, governments, and communities globally. Implementing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures represents a key strategy for corporations in addressing sustainability concerns. This study investigates how the ESG performance of publicly listed companies in China is influenced by employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Utilizing a dataset covering 4,464 publicly listed Chinese corporations from 2009 to 2022, this analysis employs fixed-effects regressions to reveal the beneficial impact of ESOPs on corporate ESG ratings. A firm’s transition from non-ESOP to ESOP status raises ESG ratings by 1.213, representing 22% of the ESG score’s standard deviation. The findings indicate that greater involvement of the top management team in an ESOP weakens the positive impact of the ESOP on corporate ESG performance. The positive impact of ESOPs on ESG performance is insignificant in the agriculture sector but more pronounced in the manufacturing and service sectors, where the transition to ESOP status results in ESG score increases of 1.122 and 1.500, respectively. The issue of endogeneity is addressed by utilizing a lagged ESOP independent variable and applying two-stage least squares regression with the average ESOP serving as the instrumental variable. The findings confirm that causality runs from ESOP to ESG rather than ESG influencing ESOP. AcknowledgmentThis study was supported by the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province – General Program (Y202249981, Y202353438), the Wenzhou Association for Science and Technology – Service and Technology Innovation Program (jczc0254), the Wenzhou-Kean University Student Partnering with Faculty Research Program (WKUSPF202404, WKUSPF202411), the Wenzhou-Kean University International Collaborative Research Program (ICRP2023002, ICRP2023004), and the Wenzhou-Kean University Internal Research Support Program (IRSPG202205, IRSPG202206).

Environmental information disclosure and green transformation: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing enterprises

Green transformation (GT) is pivotal for global sustainability, with environmental information disclosure (EDI) playing a significant role, especially in the Chinese corporate landscape. This study, spanning 2009 to 2020 and leveraging a comprehensive dataset of listed companies, explores the intricate relationship between EDI and GT in Chinese manufacturing enterprises by constructing a fixed-effect model. Motivated by the imperative to address crucial issues in GT in China, this research utilizes empirical data to uncover the mechanisms through which EDI fosters GT. The study reveals how EDI reinforces environmental consciousness within manufacturing firms. Findings underscore the crucial role of EDI in enhancing GT in manufacturing enterprises, operating through two primary mechanisms. Firstly, EDI alleviates financing constraints towards GT within these firms. Secondly, it facilitates the adoption of enhanced internal governance practices, catalyzing the development of high-quality capital renewal projects. A battery of mechanism tests provides robust evidence that EDI enhances environmental awareness, mitigates financing constraints, and amplifies the motivation and capability of manufacturing enterprises for GT. This multifaceted approach ultimately fosters high-quality GT within companies. Further research reveals that the incentive effect of EDI on GT is more significant among private enterprises and heavily polluting industries. The study reveals the subtle interplay between EDI and GT, highlighting its relevance to policymaking and practical considerations. It provides valuable insights into the ongoing pursuit of sustainability and the integration of green practices into the corporate world.

Corporate bond default prediction using bilateral topic information of credit rating reports

The default of corporate bonds can result in large financial losses as well as irreparable harm to investors’ trust and the economy as a whole, which implies that the identification of corporate bond default must be done promptly and properly. Current studies mainly rely on accounting and/or macroeconomic data and use the credit rank (CR) to disclose the credit status of corporate bonds in the default prediction task. However, the textual data of credit rating reports (CRRs) contain richer and more comprehensive information and are neglected in related work. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that draws on the unstructured data in CRR to predict the default of corporate bonds. We extract the rating opinion sentences (categorized as positive and negative) from the collected CRR files and use latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) models to mine topic information. The bilateral topic information of positive and negative opinions can reflect the anti-risk ability and potential risk of corporate bonds, respectively, based on which the constructed topic features are used for default prediction. Results on real-world Chinese corporate bonds dataset show that the bilateral topic information of CRR can significantly improve the predicting power of models (LR, SVM, KNN and MLP) under three performance metrics (AUC, KS and H-measure). By analyzing the ranking of topic features using SHAP value, the proposed framework can explain the factors that affect bond defaults, which can provide a basis for the decision-making of investment behavior.

Chinese Multinationals and Europe’s Geoeconomic Turn: The De‐Globalization of the Chinese ICT and Automotive Industry?

Amid increasing geopolitical tensions between Western powers and China over the alleged state-capitalist nature of Chinese corporate internationalization, European governments have introduced a set of political measures tightening their trade and investment regimes on grounds of national security and economic competitiveness. This article analyzes how this “geoeconomic turn” in Europe affected the internationalization of (state-backed) Chinese firms into Europe and hence the establishment of Sino-European corporate relations. With a focus on the Chinese ICT and automotive industries, we zoom in on corporate internationalization by distinguishing two modes: (a) outward foreign direct investments (greenfield investments and mergers and acquisitions) and (b) the formation of collaborative ties (strategic alliances and joint ventures) with European companies—a hitherto underexplored form of Sino-European corporate relations. Our analysis is predicated on a comprehensive dataset consolidating information on both modes of internationalization for the period 2000–2023. We show that, in relation to investment numbers, Chinese companies continue to expand into Europe, even if values are decreasing. We also find that the formation of collaborative ties (strategic alliances and joint ventures) has not halted but increased in the wake of Europe’s geoeconomic turn, indicating a further intensification of Sino-European corporate relations, though under the radar of tightening investment policies and mechanisms. When unpacking the variegated impact of the geoeconomic turn on Chinese companies’ internationalization strategies in Europe, our study also finds, however, that its ramifications vary substantively—not only per sector but also among companies exposed to varying degrees of party-state permeation. Applying a novel fine-grained measure to party-state permeation, the article shows that the geoeconomic turn seems to have affected predominantly those leading Chinese firms with a high party-state exposure.

Psychological Stress Reduction and Their Impact on Workplace Productivity in Chinese Corporations

Objectives: The workplace is a complete living environment comprised of various supportive, constructive and nonsupportive, demotivating and negative components. In all these multi-dimensional working environments, the employees are the main components that endeavor everything. In such a deliberate matter, their well- being is highly crucial and any negative factor like stress, anxiety and burnout can deteriorate the workplace's effective working cycle. Methods: This study has examined the same narrated dilemma with the external supportive role of psychological in increasing the workplace productivity of the Chinese corporations. Results: The study adopted a quantitative strategy and used a purposive sampling technique under the nonprobability sampling to effectively assess the employees for data collection. The survey approach was utilized, and 312 responses were finalized as valid for data analysis. Conclusion: The structural equational modelling revealed significant influences of the job burnout and situational anxiety in decreasing the workplace productivity of the Chinese corporations and in this myriad, the constructive voice behavior is to some extent supportive for the employees' psychological components and the workplace productivity, however, the moderation of mindfulness hasn't provided no additional support to the constructive voice and productivity.

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.

ESG and Chinese corporate OFDI

In this era of sustainable development, ESG information disclosure and its capacity to fulfill goals have a significant influence on the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of Chinese firms. Using data from A-share listed businesses in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020, this study empirically studies both the impact and mechanism of ESG information disclosure on corporate OFDI. According to the study, the greater a corporate's ESG rating, the more likely it is to engage in OFDI activities. Mechanism analysis shows ESG primarily supports corporate OFDI by easing financial limitations, lowering business risks, optimizing location choices, and strengthening reputation mechanisms. The heterogeneity study indicates this impact is stronger in large-scale firms, state-owned enterprises, and enterprises not subject to key supervision. Lastly, a further study indicates not only that ESG ambiguity reduces the promotion effect of ESG on corporate OFDI, but that high-quality disclosure also promotes OFDI more than purely symbolic low-quality ESG disclosure.

Inter-organizational cooperation in digital green supply chains: A catalyst for eco-innovations and sustainable business practices

This study investigates Digital Green Supply Chains (DGSC) within the framework of the Technology-Organization-Environment-Human (TOEH) model and Resource-Based View (RBV). The study provides a novel multidimensional analysis focusing on the interplay between technology, organization, environment, and human factors in driving DGSC and enhancing corporate eco-innovations. Based on 290 Chinese corporate managers analysed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), this study found DGSC implementation positively impacts corporate eco-innovations; organizational cooperation plays a significant moderating role. Technology, organization, environment, and human factors significantly influence internal integration and external collaboration in DGSC. Internal integration and external collaboration are critical pathways through DGSC implementation to promote eco-innovations. Furthermore, the research highlights DGSC implementation mediates and organizational cooperation positively moderates the DGSC-eco-innovation link. It enriches the existing literature by applying the TOEH model and RBV and offers actionable strategies for businesses to leverage DGSC for sustainable development practices in digital transformation.

Employee green innovation behavior based on the ability-motivation-opportunity framework: fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

PurposeThe increasing emphasis on ecological responsibility within Chinese enterprises has underscored the critical role of employees’ green innovation behavior in enhancing environmental performance and enhancing core competitiveness. Grounded in the Ability, Motivation, and Opportunity (AMO) theoretical framework, this study employs configuration analysis to investigate the driving mechanisms behind the multi-factorial interplay affecting employees’ green innovation behaviors.MethodologyData was collected through questionnaires distributed among a random sample of 219 Chinese corporate employees. fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs-QCA) was then applied to identify the specific configurations contributing to high levels of green innovation behavior.Findings(1) There are three driving paths for employees’ green innovation behaviors: a leadership-organization co-driving path composed of green self-efficacy, environmentally transformative leadership, and organizational support; a leadership-driving path composed of green self-efficacy, environmentally transformative leadership, internal motivation, and external motivation; and an organization-driving path composed of green self-efficacy, organizational support, internal motivation, and external motivation. (2) There are three non-green innovation behavior-driven paths: they are divided into organizational support lack type, leadership-organizational joint lack type, and capability lack type. (3) Under specific conditions, motivational factors and environmental change leadership, motivational factors and sense of organizational support can promote employees’ green innovation through equivalent substitution.Originality(1) Significant emphasis is placed on examining how Ability, Motivation, and Opportunity synergize to shape employees’ green innovation behaviors, addressing a gap in the literature regarding their collective influence. (2) The study applies a configural approach to unravel the complex causal linkages influencing employees’ green innovation behaviors, offering detailed insights into the dynamics between individual attributes and contextual factors. (3) This research elucidates the combined effects of factors such as organizational support, leadership styles, and employees’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and how they collaborate to foster an environment conducive to green innovation.ImplicationsThe findings not only enrich the theoretical understanding of green innovation behavior but also provide strategic recommendations for Chinese enterprises to encourage such behavior. These insights are essential for guiding sustainable development and enhancing competitive advantage.

ПРИНЦИПОВ ТЕРРИТОРИАЛЬНОГО РАСПРЕДЕЛЕНИЯ ТНК ПОСРЕДСТВОМ АНАЛИЗА ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКИХ ПОКАЗАТЕЛЕЙ ГЛОБАЛЬНОМ УРОВНЕ

This article aims to identify the main regional distribution trends and changes in the global TNCs 'activity structures. A systematic approach and comparative analysis are used to conduct the research. The addition of additional tools are mathematical statistical, graphical, and cartographic methods. Based on the Fortune Global 500 list for the years 2019 to 2023, this study is based. In the course of writing the article, it was discovered that the main factors that TNCs have today are related to, among others, their turnover and popularity as well as their geographic location, particularly in the "second" and "third" world countries. It is worth noting that Chinese corporations also showed active activity and took leading positions in the TNC ratings. This fact confirms that the total number of Chinese TNCs is larger than US TNCs. It is worth taking into account that TNCs in China and the USA make up more than half of all TNCs according to this list. Digital technologies are the main stimulus for the development of the sectoral economy. The impact of the coronavirus on the activities of TNCs was examined. It has been established that there has been a significant redistribution of positions in the ranking of the world's largest TNCs. A reduction in sales volumes of TNCs has been recorded throughout the world, this was especially reflected in the heavy industry.

Does corporate internationalization affect analysts’ earnings forecast bias? Evidence from China

Using manually collected firm-level data on foreign subsidiaries, we examine the impact of internationalization on analysts’ earnings forecast bias in Chinese corporations. We find that analysts’ earnings forecast bias is stronger among multinational firms when compared with domestic firms, and the higher the level of internationalization, the greater the bias in analysts’ earnings forecasts. Various methods, such as the Heckman two-stage least squares, propensity score matching, and difference in difference tests, are employed to ensure the robustness of our results. The mechanism analysis indicates that oversea business complexity, information asymmetry and analysts’ experience are critical factors that moderate the relationship between international diversification and forecast bias. These findings have important implications for multinational corporations, analysts, and investors.

The Legacy of Early 20th Century Protestant Education on Modern Chinese Corporate Gender Diversity

The Legacy of Early 20th Century Protestant Education on Modern Chinese Corporate Gender Diversity

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.

The Impact of Positive Workplace Gossip on Employees' Job Satisfaction: A Study Based on the Confucian Humanistic Management

Based on the Confucian philosophy of humanistic management, a relationship model between positive workplace gossip and employees' job satisfaction is constructed through a questionnaire survey of 205 Chinese corporate employees. Meanwhile, psychological capital and organizational identity are introduced as mediating variables to analyze the impact of positive workplace gossip on the satisfaction of the gossiped employees and the formation mechanism. The results show that: positive workplace gossip has a significant positive impact on employees' job satisfaction. ②Psychological capital has significant mediating effects on the relationship between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction. ③Organizational identity has significant mediating effects on the relationship between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction.

Metadiscursive nouns in corporate communication: A cross-cultural study of CEO letters in the US and Chinese corporate social responsibility reports

The study of rhetorical devices and how corporate leaders organise the texts and convey attitudes to stakeholders in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has become an important research area in recent years. A relatively neglected means of rhetorical expressions, however, is metadiscursive nouns. This study investigates the use of metadiscursive nouns in a 0.5-million-word self-built corpus of the US and Chinese CEO letters in CSR reports to reveal cross-cultural variations. The results show that the interactive metadiscursive nouns are twice as frequent in the US discourse as in the Chinese discourse, demonstrating greater efforts invested in cohesion by the US companies. This difference can be attributed to the writer-responsible rhetoric in the West and the reader-responsible conventions in China. The interactional metadiscursive nouns in the US discourse occur twice as frequently as in the Chinese counterpart, suggesting greater exertion of nominal stance by the US companies. This discrepancy mainly arises from the high- and low-context variations between the US and China. This study sheds new insights on metadiscursive nouns as rhetorical resources in cross-cultural CSR communication and provides implications for ESP practitioners to use them as a means of conceptualising writer–reader interaction in corporate communication.

Digital transformation and its effect on resource allocation efficiency and productivity in Chinese corporations

Digital technology improves the capacity for collecting, processing, and sharing information, enabling corporations to optimize resource allocation. Based on data from Chinese A-share listed corporations between 2008 and 2020, the study investigates the relationship between digital transformation and resource reallocation. The findings indicate that digital transformation significantly enhances the allocation efficiency of capital and labor. Specifically, doubling the frequency of digital transformation terms can correct capital input deviation by approximately 9.5 % and labor input deviation by around 7.3 %. The enhancement primarily stems from mitigating excessive input inefficiencies, while demonstrating insignificant effects on underinvestment scenarios. Moreover, these results are consistent across an array of robustness tests, including Bartik IV and difference-in-differences strategy using the “Broadband China” policy as a quasi-natural experiment. Mechanism analysis reveals that alleviating external information frictions and enhancing internal information utilization constitute the primary channels through which digital transformation fosters resource allocation efficiency. Furthermore, digital transformation not only raises the overall total factor productivity (TFP) through resource reallocation but also directly fosters the growth of corporate TFP.