Corporate Governance Implications of Foreign Stock Exchange Listing (or Cross-listing) for China’s Corporations

The first company from the People’s Republic of China listed outside Mainland China was an H-share enterprise listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 15, 1993. In the twenty years since then, the rapid development of the Mainland’s economy has created a climate in which China’s companies can internationalise, and some of China’s heavyweight State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) even tried to accelerate their overseas investment by means of transnational acquisitions and mergers. This thesis undertakes a detailed theoretical and empirical study exploring the corporate governance practices of Chinese companies that have listed on foreign stock exchanges; of particular interest has been the influence that foreign listing has exerted on the corporate governance practices of these Chinese companies. Several experts and scholars have provided valuable criticisms and remarks as part of the fieldwork for this thesis. A number of major propositions concerning the corporate governance of overseas listed Chinese companies are discussed and fieldwork data has been collected to test these propositions

Chinese and Norwegian SOEs’ Quest for Oil in Angola : the influence of origins

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is currently being both researched extensively as well as receiving increasing attention in the global business environment. Due to the exceptional economic growth in China, Chinese businesses continue to expand their operations internationally to meet the domestic demand for various resources. Since their entry to the global business arena, Chinese practices have received varying levels of criticism and they have been accused of i.e. neo-colonialism on their operations in Africa. The reasons for the differing perceptions on definitions of CSR are argued in this thesis to be a result of origins. National cultures arguably influence the business culture of enterprises, resulting in non-universal interpretations with respect to CSR policies and practices. The thesis addresses the differences in operations of two SOEs – Statoil & Sinopec – through analyses based on academic literature on CSR, stakeholders, different philosophical values of the case cultures, and a collection of secondary data. The research results pointed out that the country of origin indeed plays a role in influencing organizational culture. Further observations also pointed out that the level of development in country of origin influences i.e. the extent to which companies engage in CSR activities. Statoil originating from a wealthy nation is setting high CSR standards to its operations, which can pose an operational challenge for other oil companies from less wealthy nations. Thus, China should further consider redefining its status on publishing information to increase its competitiveness in the global business arena, as their main issue appears to be non-disclosure of information expected by the Wes

The impact of Chinese cultural values on human resource policies and practices within transnational corporations in China

This thesis focuses on key cross-cultural issues that transnational corporations (TNCs) face when formulating and implementing Human Resource (HR) policies and practices in their Chinese affiliates. The aim of this study is two-fold. The first is to investigate how employees perceive HR policies and practices that have been transferred from parent enterprises of TNCs, and the second is to explore the extent to which Chinese cultural values influence these HR policies and practices. These aims are addressed through an exploratory research design using in-depth qualitative interviews with seventy-six participants across twenty-one Western TNCs and two Chinese state-owned enterprises in China. By presenting the differences between the HR policies and practices with Western TNCs and Chinese companies, the distinctive Chinese cultural values can be interpreted against a more holistic background. This study contributes to international human resource management (IHRM) literature by empirically investigating the perceptions and views of both managerial and non-managerial employees on HR policies and practices within the participating companies. This study explores the contemporary Chinese cultural values and examines how these cultural values exert influence on the HR policies and practices. The findings of this study demonstrate a variation between global HR policies and practices of TNCs and their implementation at the local level. Moreover, the researcher finds that there are three national cultural values with Chinese characteristics which can affect HR policies and practices within TNCs in China; these are: guan-xi, valuing seniority, and the importance of the „human factor‟. It is indicated that Chinese cultural values are far more sophisticated than the ones conceptualised in previous literature, as these three cultural values appear to be interlinked and be embedded within the Chinese culture of collectivism. More importantly, the study shows that these deeply embedded cultural values can not be easily „ironed-out‟ by organisational culture and global HR policies and practices of TNCs. Therefore, it is argued that TNCs need to acknowledge cross-cultural differences and consider these Chinese cultural values when implementing their global HR policies and practices in China. Organisational and managerial commitment to such an approach would require conscious steps to be taken towards adopting a closely monitored HR implementation process and more inclusive HR policies and practices, rather than expecting Chinese employees to accept and adopt the global HR policies and practices which may be against their cultural values and norms

Corporate social responsibility reporting in mainland China

Although CSR has been the subject of substantial academic research for more than half a century, the CSR literature is dominated by empirical studies in the industrialized countries. There is limited knowledge on how CSR is perceived and implemented by companies in developing countries. This research is trying to answer those questions: what has been reported in China? Which stakeholder groups are the most important stakeholder groups in China? What is the content of CSR reports in China? And what factors are associated with CSR reporting in China, in terms of culture, political and legal system, ownership, size and industry? Based on a content analysis approach, this paper aims to identify the determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in China using stand-alone reports of the top 500 Chinese companies from 2006 to 2010. It is found that CSR reporting is positively associated with various factors. In addition, companies in environmental sensitive industries tend to report more environmental responsibility information than others. State-Owned Enterprises are not doing better than other types of companies. Laws, regulations or guidelines have little impacts on the reporting in China. Also the government is not one of the most important stakeholders in China. The research results support the stakeholder theory in an emerging market with important and relevant insights for enterprise managers interested in exploiting the reports as a tool to communicate with their stakeholders

A Comparison Between Shale Gas in China and Unconventional Fuel Development in the United States: Water, Environmental Protection, and Sustainable Development

China is believed to have the world\u27s largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental, and investment-related issues will likely restrain its exploitation. China\u27s capacity to face these hurdles successfully and produce commercial shale gas will have a crucial impact on the regional gas market and on China’s energy mix, as Beijing strives to decrease reliance on imported oil and coal, and, at the same time, tries to meet growing energy demand and maintain a certain level of resource autonomy. The development of the unconventional natural gas extractive industry will also provide China with further negotiating power to obtain more advantageously priced gas. This article, which adopts a comparative perspective, underlines the trends taken from unconventional fuel development in the United States, emphasizing their potential application to China in light of recently signed production-sharing agreements between qualified foreign investors and China. The wide range of regulatory and enforcement problems in this matter are increased by an extremely limited liberalization of gas prices, lack of technological development, and barriers to market access curbing access to resource extraction for private investors. This article analyzes the legal tools that can play a role in shale gas development while assessing the new legal and fiscal policies that should be crafted or reinforced. It also examines the institutional settings’ fragmentation and conflicts, highlighting how processes and outcomes are indeed path dependent. Moreover, the possibilities of cooperation and coordination (including through U.S.-China common initiatives), and the role of transparency and disclosure of environmental data are assessed. These issues are exacerbated by concerns related to the risk of water pollution deriving from mismanaged drilling and fracturing, absence of adequate predictive evaluation regulatory instruments and industry standards: this entails consequences for social stability and environmental degradation which are inconsistent with the purposes of sustainable development

Rising powers and foreign intrastate armed conflicts : trends and patterns of China’s intervention in African civil wars

What influences one state to intervene in another’s intrastate armed conflict? In answering this question, existing scholarship has tended to emphasise the position of the intervening state in the international system; suggesting that, that is the main determinant factor of a state’s external intervention behaviour. As a result, existing research on intervention in foreign intrastate armed conflicts is dominated by a focus on great powers and their intervention methods. Employing the neoclassical realist causal logic, this thesis argues, on the contrary, that whether a state intervenes in a foreign intrastate armed conflict is a factor of both systemic and state level factors. A state’s intervention behavior is therefore determined, first, by the increase in its relative economic power, then by its changing perception of threat to its interests abroad. What it means is that a state’s position in the international system, rising power, great power or small power, is not the only determinant factor in exploring its intervention behavior, unit level factors also matter. In advancing that argument, this thesis significantly challenges the prevailing assumption that intervention in foreign intrastate armed conflicts is a preserve of great powers, and an instrument of their foreign policy; and thus, broadens the intervention discourse to include the intervention behavior of rising powers. Yet, still there exist, in current literature, a lack of research which systematically connects the above neoclassical realist theoretical reasoning with empirical analysis of intervention in foreign conflicts by rising powers vis-à-vis the 21st century global order recalibrations. By exploring the intervention behaviour of China, a rising global power, in intrastate armed conflicts in three countries, Libya, Mali and South Sudan; and by using the comparative case study method to assess trends and patterns in its intervention behaviour, as its relative economic power increases and its perception of threat evolves, this thesis highlights a more systematic interlink between theoretical and empirical analysis that takes into consideration the changing status of rising powers in the global system and its effect on their intervention behaviour. It therefore makes a case for an empirical study of China’s intervention in intrastate armed conflicts in Africa that considers the interactive dynamics between systemic and domestic variables in its causal explanation of China’s foreign intervention behaviour. In doing that, it points out that understanding intervention in terms of great powers and military action limits our exploration of the emerging re-conceptualization of intervention, its practice and methods as employed by rising powers in foreign intrastate armed conflicts. The thesis therefore makes a case for an innovative (re-)definition of intervention that enables an analytical assessment of the emerging intervention practices

China's foreign policy towards Central Asia: expanding the concepts of national interest and national security

The present study provides an analysis of China’s foreign policy towards Central Asia to trace ‘culture of China’s foreign policy’. The culture of China’s foreign policy approach deals with China as an identity and process rather than being static or within boundaries. The present research highlights China’s multilateral and cooperative policies in Central Asia and with Russia as an outcome of evolutionary process of construction of China’s identity. The complex process of building relations with Central Asian region although within a short period of time (in post-Soviet context) are analysed to make a case for China’s innovative (partially) political processes of dealing with frontier security and embracing multilateralism. This is explained by studying the evolution of China’s identity and interests and the role of significant events that affect its perceptions of self and that are a prescription for its policy orientations as observed in case of foreign policy towards Central Asia. The theoretical foundation of Peter Katzenstein thesis is helpful premises upon which an argument in favour of the discourse of identity and security is developed to see how culture of national security of China and ‘complementarity’ of Central Asian states is at work in security cooperation seen among these states. By problematizing the notion of ‘national interest’, the present study argues that interests of the states can be contextualized in a broader environment referred as civilization to trace the relationship between interests and identities of China as at play in Central Asian region. By placing the political state of ‘China’ in the broader context of civilization and as evolving, helps understand how Chinese political spectrum seeks to construct and maintain a great power identity while locating ‘self’ against ‘others’. It further argues that the cooperative and multilateral policies of China in form of Shanghai Cooperation Organization can be understood best by studying how the configurations of identity of China has guided the policy formation process; that constructs and reconstructs interstate normative structure in form of SCO

SECURITIZATION OF OIL AND GAS SUPPLY CHAINS: CASES OF CHINA, CANADA, AND RUSSIA

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Philanthropy in China

Philanthropy in China is fast growing. A new important charity law of China came into effect in 2016. This book is a comprehensive report about these developments: Philanthropy is considered the third form of wealth distribution (private means to public ends and communities) after market competition and taxation scheme. In individualistic and market-oriented societies, philanthropy is more established and relevant than in societies, where the state controls distribution. This book compares Chinese and Western concepts of philanthropy and analyzes the history, drivers, institutional environment, latest legal frame, donation patterns, the role of civil society, corporate giving and the media in Chinese philanthropy. The report serves as comprehensive overview for all actors in society in China and internationally who are dealing with philanthropy in China. (Globethics.net Publications

Diaspora and Trust

Diaspora and Trust charts changing Sino-Latin relations at the outset of the 21st century. Combining political-economic analysis with ethnography, the book examines the responses of Cuba and Mexico to China’s growing global influence. Despite opposite economic policy orientations, neither Latin American country has successfully adapted to new conditions of cooperation and competition with China. Furthermore, Cuba and Mexico both struggle with uncertain relationships to the Chinese diaspora communities within their borders. TRUST AND DIASPORA draws on fieldwork in all three countries, providing a rich account of personal experiences at the intersection of global and local affairs. In the process, author Adrian H. Hearn advocates a paradigm for international relations and economic development predicated on the idea of trust. Hearn’s study theorizes trust as an alternative to existing models of exchange, including those based on social capital in the West and traditional Confucian values in China. The book argues convincingly for trust as a foundation for fruitful change in a globalized Cuba and Mexico and as a key to new balances of state, private, and civic power necessitated by the rise of China. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched