• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2022

Purpose - This study was aimed to investigate whether the outcomes of green innovation brought positive effects to Chinese firms' ESG performance. Design/methodology/approach - Green innovation patents and ESG performance data of Chinese listed firms were empirically analyzed using panel data fix-effect linear estimations. Findings - The study found that green innovation performance enhanced Chinese firms' ESG performance. Also, the results showed that corporate social responsibility decoupling weakened this relationship and state ownership positively moderated this relationship, whereas corporate philanthropic giving did not have significant impact. Research implications or Originality - The findings indicated that green innovation was beneficial to enhancing corporate sustainability performance. In addition, the study highlighted the role of CSR communications and state ownership in interacting the positive effect that green innovation performance brings to corporate ESG performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.97-114
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• 2021

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of privatization of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on their initial returns and long-term performance after initial public offering(IPO). Design/methodology/approach - This study used 1,599 Chinese IPO firms, some of which were SOEs. The multivariate regression analyses were implemented to analyze their effects. Findings - First, the privatization of SOEs does not have any statistically significant effect on the initial return of IPO firms. Second, the shareholdings of government prior to IPOs for both privatizing of SOEs and non-privatizing firms and for both exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen have a statistically significant positive effect on the initial return of IPO firms. Third, the privatization of SOEs has statistically significant negative effect on the long-term returns of IPO firms. Fourth, the state-shareholdings prior to IPOs have statistically significant negative effects on the long-term return of IPO firms. Fifth, the state-shareholdings of the privatizing SOEs prior to IPOs have statistically significant positive effects on the long-term return of IPO firms. Research implications or Originality - The results imply that the higher shareholdings and ownership of the Chinese government on SOEs reduce the information asymmetry for the investors of IPO shares or maybe due to inefficiency of SOEs prior to IPOs lead to lower offer prices or higher opening prices leading to severe underpricing and relatively lower stock market returns in the long-run both for the privatizing firms and for the higher state-shareholding firms, while both factors interactively improve their long-term stock market returns.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.35-58
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• 2020

Purpose - This study examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) location choice for Chinese firms, focusing on the agglomeration effect for firms of the same nationality. Design/methodology - The empirical data are China's inward FDI from the top 19 economies (excluding tax havens and Taiwan) in terms of FDI during 1997-2015 and China's outward FDI from the top 18 economies (excluding tax havens). This study uses a random effects generalized least squares model for panel data analysis. Findings - The results confirm that both host countries' costs and market conditions and the degree of agglomeration affect these countries' attractiveness for FDI inflows. Specifically, agglomeration has a significant effect on China's inward and outward FDI. This study confirms that the agglomeration of firms of the same nationality has predictive power for multinational enterprises' FDI location choices. The host countries' real GDP and trade openness also positively affect FDI inflows. Interestingly, however, China's production cost has a positive effect. Thus, inward FDI aimed at entering the Chinese market is increasing in recent years relative to the previous efficiency-seeking FDI. Inward FDI in China is therefore the market-entry type, whereas outward FDI by Chinese firms is the market-oriented type. Originality/value - These results suggest that the effects of the potential determinants of Chinese outward FDI are similar to those of inward FDI as China's trade liberalization progresses.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.657-670
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• 2011

China has gone through rapid economic growth due to transitional economies since 1978. In particular, Chinese transitional economies has led to fundamental changes in firms' activities under the socialist system. Nevertheless, Chinese firms have formed new industrial production organizations and spatial orders by sustaining personal networks based on existing traditional firm practice, which is called 'guanxi'. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to identify the influence of personal networks, guanxi, on the business activities of Chinese firms by investigating the formation of guanxi mechanism. The main characteristics of guanxi represented in inter-firm relations are as follows. First, guanxi has played a role in facilitating inter-firm relations and business activities, because it has an inter-debt relations based on inter-reciprocal relations between firms. Second, Chinese firms has depended on posteriori guanxi rather than inherent guanxi by the internalization of personal networks through 'guanxi communicators'.Third, guanxi between firms and local government in extra-firm relations has been established to minimize risks from unstable legal regulations.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.45-53
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• 2019

Purpose - The relationship between multinationality and performance has become a hot topic in academic circles and is very important for multinational firms, especially for Chinese multinational firms, who need more experience to enter the international market. Given this background, this paper attempts to figure out the importance of multinationality to China's firm performance and to explore whether the Four-stage Theory can also be applied to China's firms. Research design, data, and methodology - We employ the panel data of 435 multinational firms from 2008 to 2017 chosen from China's A-shares to conduct an empirical analysis by using a fixed-effects model. In the paper, the performance is represented by ROA (return on assets), treated as a dependent variable, and multinationality is represented by FSTS (foreign sales/total sales), treated as an independent variable. Results - We find that the performance first decreases then rises, then falls down, and rises again in the end. Hence there is a W-shaped relationship between the multinationality of the Chinese manufacturing industries and firm performance, proving that the four-stage theory is also applicable to Chinese multinational firms. Conclusions - These empirical results can provide some advice for policymakers to improve the firm performance such as reducing the logistics cost of multinationality.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-34
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• 2019

This study investigates whether and how a firm's cost of equity capital is influenced by the extent of a firm's real earnings management (REM). Using a large sample of Hong Kong and Chinese firms over the 9-year period 2009-2017, we find that our implied cost of equity estimates are positively associated with both the extent of REM and the extent of accrual-based earnings management (AEM), but the positive association is stronger for REM than for AEM. We also provide evidence suggesting that the effect of AEM and REM on the cost of equity is more pronounced for Hong Kong firms than Chinese firms, and within Chinese firms, it is less pronounced for the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Collectively, our results suggest that while both REM and AEM exacerbate the quality of earnings used by outside investors, REM does so to a greater extent than AEM, and thus the market demands a higher risk premium for REM activities than for AEM activities and that this cost of capital-increase effect is more prominent in a developed market like Hong Kong and mitigated by state ownership in China because of investors' expectations for a lower level of detriments to firm fundamentals by REM due to government's protection in a less developed market like China.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1-16
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• 2023

Purpose Despite the ongoing digital transformation, it is not clear whether emerging market firms follow their manufacturing FDI path in the emerging digital industries. This paper examines how digital orientation affects the location strategies in internationalization and how the existing innovation capacities moderate the link between digital orientation and the location strategies. Design/methodology/approach This study chooses the Chinese setting for research design because digital transformation is already prevalent in the society and the cases of outward expansion are salient among the emerging markets. It uses the panel dataset of 976 Chinese listed firms that consists of 6,648 observations spanning from 2007 to 2017. Ordinary least square regression is used for the statistical approach with a one-year lag in the model. Findings Digital orientation increases a likelihood of emerging multinationals' entries in developed countries, and a high level of innovative capacities strengthens the link. Two groups seem to prefer entries in developed countries: firms with a high level of digital orientation with a high level of innovative capacities and firms with a low level of digital orientation, if with a low level of innovative capacities. The former reflects the context of digital transformation and the latter hints at the tax avoidance or interests in real estate. Research implications or originality While emerging multinationals are known to prefer entries in developing countries for capacity arbitrage, our results forecast that their FDI strategies may have a drastic change as digital transformation deepens.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.3-27
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• 2012

As Chinese political and economical status gets higher, a lot of multinational firms have tried to find some chances from the Chinese market successfully. Though geographically Korea is located closely to China, a lot of firms entering into Chinese market have turned out failed. Thus, this study researched Korean manufacturing firms in China, surveyed their localization degree of distribution, and tried to find out factors which influence these localization from a far-reaching literature. As a result of analyzing 146 questionnaires, the length of channel, among Chinese environmental factors, has a positive influence on the distribution localization degree. In addition, the factor of distribution relation assets has a positive effect on the distribution localization degree. Considering this study, the Chinese market, especially distribution field, has recently grown up to the world-class level. Therefore a firm intending to enter into China needs to be careful not to underestimate China.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.87-115
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• 2024

This study examines the effect of R&D investment on firm performance and value of Chinese private firms. Through R&D investment, firms aim to acquire knowledge and technological resources to create innovation and competitive advantage, which ultimately enhances firm performance and value. However, unlike other investments, R&D investments are characterized by high adjustment costs and risks, uncertainty and asymmetric information. In addition, the effect of R&D investment on firm performance and value has been shown to be mixed results due to various internal and external contextual factors. Therefore, this study intends to consider how the ESG activities of firms, which have recently attracted attention, act as a contextual factor in the results of R&D investment. This is because interaction with stakeholders through ESG activities is considered to be an important factor in securing competitive advantages and sustainable growth. In this context, this study measures the effect of a firm's R&D investment on its business performance by dividing it into financial performance and value, respectively, and examines the moderating effect of ESG score on the relationship. Based on empirical analysis of all Chinese private firms from 2010 to 2019, the results show that a firm's R&D investment has a negative impact on performance and a positive impact on value. Furthermore, a high ESG score of private firms positively moderates each relationship, emphasizing the importance of ESG activities.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.67-79
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• 2019

This study examines the impact of corporate governance on capital structure decisions based on a large panel of Chinese listed firms. Using the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, and persistency in capital structure decisions, we document that the ownership structure plays a significant role in determining leverage ratios. More specially, we find that managerial ownership has a positive and significant impact on firms' leverage, consistent with the incentive alignment hypothesis. We also find that managerial ownership only affects the leverage decisions of private firms in the post-2005 split share reform period. State ownership negatively influence leverage decisions implying that SOEs may face fewer restrictions in equity issuance and may receive favourable treatments when applying for seasoned equity ¿nancing, thus use less debt. Furthermore, our results show that while foreign ownership negatively influences leverage decisions, legal person shareholding positively influences firms' leverage decisions only for state controlled firms. We also find that the board structure variables (board size and the proportion of independent directors) do not influence firms' capital structure decisions. Our findings suggest that recent ownership reforms have been successful in terms of providing incentive to managers through managerial shareholdings to take risky financial choices.