This article surveys corporate governance in China, as described in a growing literature published in top journals. Unlike the classical vertical agency problems in Western countries, the dominant agency problem in China is the horizontal agency conflict between controlling and minority shareholders arising from concentrated ownership structure; thus one cannot automatically apply what is known about the USA to China. As these features are also prevalent in many other countries, insights from this survey can also be applied to countries far beyond China. We start by describing controlling shareholder and agency problems in China, and then discuss how law and institutions are particularly important for China, where controlling shareholders have great power. As state-owned enterprises have their own features, we separately discuss their corporate governance. We also briefly discuss corporate social responsibility in China. Finally, we provide an agenda for future research.

This paper provides a modern overview of corporate governance in China and in doing so highlights many corporate governance features and issues that are, for the most part, unique to China. We also describe how papers in this special issue advance our understanding of corporate governance in China and in general.

This paper provides a modern overview of capital markets, financial institutions, and corporate finance in China. In our discussions, we highlight and describe what is unique to China. We also describe how papers in the Special Issue advance our understanding of financial markets, institutions, and corporate finance in China and in general.

Firms are embedded in the product market as well as the capital market. Their behavior in the product market will inevitably affect their performance in the capital market, and vice versa. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we empirically test the existence of spillover effect of advertising on financial constraints in the capital market. We find that product market advertising significantly alleviates the firm's financial constraints, especially when the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders is more serious and when the firm is in a consumer-product industry. We also find that advertising improves brand value, increases attention, and alleviates peer firms' financial constraints, providing supplementary evidence that one alleviation mechanism is information asymmetry. Further analyses show that advertising significantly reduces the firm's financing costs. These findings provide valuable insights into how firms alleviate financial constraints.

This paper examines the impact of multiple blockholders on earnings management when the main conflict of interest is between controlling shareholder and other shareholders. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2017 and controlling for potential sample selection and endogeneity, we find that firms with multiple blockholders tend to have higher earnings management than firms with a single controlling shareholder. The positive impact of multiple blockholders on earnings management is more pronounced when those blockholders are the same type – state or private. Earnings management is also enhanced with more large shareholders and higher relative ownership of other large shareholders to the controlling shareholder. The results are consistent with the cost-sharing hypothesis, where the other large shareholders shoulder the costs of earnings management with the controlling shareholder proportionally, but not the private benefits of control. Further tests show that the positive relation between multiple large shareholders and earnings management is less pronounced in firms with stronger internal or external governance. Overall, our paper demonstrates a potential dark side of multiple blockholders from the angle of financial reporting quality.

This study investigates the informational effect of stock liquidity on dividend payouts. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms during 2000–2014, we find a positive relation between stock liquidity and dividend payouts. This result is robust to the use of alternative measures of liquidity, and holds after we control for endogeneity concerns. In accord with our hypothesis that stock liquidity provides information and increases insiders' incentive to pay out dividends, we find that the positive relation between stock liquidity and dividend payouts is more pronounced when the information environment is opaque, and when conflict between controlling shareholders and minority investors is severe. Further, market reactions to regulatory stipulations requiring dividend payouts are more favorable for firms with low stock liquidity, suggesting that legal provisions and regulations are substitutes for stock liquidity. Finally, we rule out several alternative explanations concerning the governance of non-controlling blockholders and the alleviation of manager-shareholder agency conflict.

Using Chinese data, we examine whether synchronous remote board meetings, which facilitate status equalization among directors and alleviate their pressure for conformity, affect board monitoring effectiveness. We find that compared to face-to-face meetings, synchronous remote meetings are associated with directors’ better meeting attendance behavior, a higher likelihood of director dissent on monitoring-related proposals, higher forced CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, and more effective investments. These results hold when we use remote meetings that include both synchronous and asynchronous remote meetings. Proposal-director level analysis further shows that remote meetings reduce the pressure to conform faced by young first-term directors and socially connected directors.

We propose that family firms with religious founders have less risk than other family firms. Using a sample of 4159 family firms in China, we find that firms founded by religious entrepreneurs have lower leverage and less investment in fixed and intangible assets compared to firms founded by nonreligious entrepreneurs. These findings are consistent with our proposition. However, these findings primarily hold for entrepreneurs who adhere to Western religions but not to Eastern religions. As such, our paper makes important contributions to the literature on family-firms and their risk-taking and the literature on the relation between religion and risk aversion.

This study investigates the governance role of multiple large shareholders (MLS hereafter) in firms' investment decisions. Using a sample of 1640 Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock markets, we compare the investment efficiency of firms having MLS with that of firms having a single large shareholder and find that the presence and power of MLS are associated with significantly higher investment efficiency. The results are robust after we address endogeneity and sample selection concerns. Further tests show that MLS exert governance mainly through “voice.” MLS tend to lower potential overinvestment and increase future investment performance. The impact of MLS on investment efficiency does not vary with a firm's access to resources and is less prominent in firms with stronger governance and less information asymmetry. Our results imply that MLS play a governance role and alleviate a firm's agency costs and information asymmetry manifested in a firm's investment efficiency.

We develop and test an ownership structure pecking order. Our ownership pecking order sorts out which structures are likely to have relatively fewer agency costs versus higher agency costs. At the top of the pecking order are firms with a single controlling shareholder, they have the lowest agency costs when that shareholder is not the government. Next is the presence of multiple large shareholders. They are even more effective when the large shareholders are of the same type. The structure with the highest agency costs consists of a single large non-controlling shareholder. Our empirical tests confirm this pecking order.