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This paper aims to explore empirically the emergence of entrepreneurs in China’s transition context since the 1980s.

This paper applies the China Private Enterprises Survey Database and historical evidence and Chi-Square test to identify the emergence patterns of China’s entrepreneurs in different historical stages.

This longitudinal study finds that factors such as working experience, education background and social connection had strong influences on entrepreneurship, but the impact of these have varied significantly along with institutional changes over the past three decades. It also identifies that the majority of emergent entrepreneurs were formerly low-level public servants and high-qualified managers in state-owned enterprises. Additionally, significant trends including an increasing number of female entrepreneurs, a decreasing impact from political networks, improving investment in innovation and diversifying financial sources are also found.

This paper is the first to apply the Chinese Private Enterprises Survey database to investigate the emergence patterns of China’s entrepreneurs in different historical stages after the 1978 reform.

Many entrepreneurs are able to manage their businesses within relatively contained and familiar geographical and cultural circles. With a world economy shrinking every day amid a flood of digital information, todayʼs entrepreneur is increasingly confronted with opportunities to consider new ways to secure vendors and recruit customers. Many unfamiliar possibilities emerge. Should the entrepreneur venture beyond “comfortable” surroundings to consider international connections? Specifically, what about China? How practical is this fetching business temptation of larger markets and lower-cost subcontractors? What are the social, trade, financial, and political issues? Should a “China strategy” be a true entrepreneurial offensive, or rather a defensive response to competition? Is this “China strategy” the promise of yet another entrepreneurial nirvana? Or is it perhaps again a case of “Be careful of what you wish for; it may really come true?”

There is a dearth of literature aimed at understanding the Chinese entrepreneur. There are even fewer studies that compare Chinese and American entrepreneurs. As the interdependence of the economic superpowers continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important to understand similarities and differences between the two groups. Furthermore, researching the two groups can result in greater understanding of the entrepreneur. The purpose of this paper is to look at how economics, culture and policy influence the formation of established successful entrepreneurs.

In this study Chinese and American researchers collected responses from 279 Chinese and American established entrepreneurs in China and the USA. The goal of the research is to develop greater understanding of how culture, economics and policy influence the formation of their ventures.

The study's results indicate a significant difference in Chinese and American response to policy. The significant difference in policy response might justify further research, and could indicate that policy is more important to the Chinese entrepreneur.

A contribution to existing entrepreneurial theory was made regarding the similarities of networking regardless of cultural environment. A three‐dimensional conceptual model was used, measuring culture, economics and policy.

This paper aims to introduce the history and major achievement of the Chinese private enterprise survey (CPES), which is one of the most enduring large-scale nationwide sample surveys in China, providing important micro firm-level data for understanding and studying the development of Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs over the past 26 years.

The main body of this paper is based on a bibliometric analysis of all literature using CPES until 2017.

This paper discusses problems that users may encounter during data mining. By doing so, it can assist other researchers to get a better understanding of what has been done (e.g. journals, topics, scholars and institutions) and do their research in a more targeted way.

As members of the survey project team, the authors also take a prospect of the future data design and use, as well as offer some suggestions about how to use the CPES data to improve high-quality development and business environment evaluation in China.

This paper is the first to provide an overall picture of academic papers in China and abroad that have used the CPES data.

There has long been a prevailing view concerning North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), that the world’s most reclusive socialist state, in accordance with its “juche” (self-reliance) ideology,¹ shuns capitalism, and discourages entrepreneurship and innovation, and feigns reform to further its nuclear ambitions including the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Under its previous leaders, Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, the DPRK saw little need for and discouraged innovation in the financial sector, particularly that of Western origin. However, since coming to power in December 2011, its current leader, Kim Jong-Un, has placed a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, in numerous sectors, including its financial system. Based on research and interviews conducted with international business and entrepreneurship experts that have trained North Koreans, and personal experience as an adjunct business faculty member in the DPRK, this research shows the recent developments including the role played by entrepreneurs in helping the DPRK achieve its goal of economic and technological transformation. The primary focus is on changes in the DPRK’s financial sector.

This study aims at providing exploratory insights into the initiative and capabilities of Chinese SMEs to develop and utilize diverse networks to support internationalization. Such network development and utilization efforts are fundamental to the analysis and explanation of Chinese firms’ internationalization patterns and outcomes. Extending from the existing network studies in the Chinese context that generally put emphasis on strong‐tie and ethnic‐oriented networks, this paper investigates and explains explicitly the use and effects of both strong‐ and weak‐tie networks in the international development of Chinese SMEs. Indepth case studies on four rapidly internationalized Chinese SMEs are conducted. The case findings demonstrate that weak‐tie networks are essential to the firms’ business development in foreign markets; and were proactively developed and utilized in the course of the firms’ development. The cases also provide alternative perspectives to the beliefs and values underpinning strong‐tie networks presumed in existing literature. The findings draw attention to the changing business values and approaches of the Chinese firms aiming at developing internationally. Managerial implications concerning the significant influence of effective networking on internationalization are pinpointed.

This paper aims to explore the influence of entrepreneur’s political involvement on private-own enterprises’ (POEs’) selection of two inter-organizational conflict resolutions approaches (private approach and public approach), in the context of China’s transition economy.

Drawing on a sample of POEs operating in China’s transition economy in the year 2000, this study investigates the possible association between the entrepreneur’s political involvement and the approach chosen to resolve inter-organizational conflicts. A further step is taken to look into the implications of such a choice.

The empirical study reveals that those POEs with greater entrepreneurial political involvement have the propensity to rely on public approach. In general, POEs are more satisfied with the private approach than the public approach when managing conflicts. Besides, the study shows that the positive effects derived from the entrepreneur’s satisfaction on private approach will be weakened in more established institutions.

This paper has its unique contribution in highlighting the significance of how entrepreneurs’ political involvement interferes with inter-organizational conflict resolution.

E-entrepreneurship is developed based on digital platforms, having specific technical opportunities, such as the interactive ecosystem, fast payment method and online store function, without strict requirements for online entrepreneurs. Considering China’s e-entrepreneurship environment and cultural background, this paper aims to analyse individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation based on the capability–opportunity–motivation–behaviour (COM-B) behaviour changing theory.

Through testing 602 samples based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling, the factors from the opportunity and capability units positively affect individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation. Meanwhile, because of the economic and social environmental differences between China’s urban and rural regions, this study promotes the multi-group analysis based on individuals’ regional backgrounds.

First, as opportunity factors, technical and policy opportunities have significantly positive relationships with individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation. Second, entrepreneurial and cultural capabilities are essential for Chinese entrepreneurs while making an entrepreneurial decision. Third, because of the e-entrepreneurial environment difference and educational system gap, entrepreneurial capability exerts a greater influence on the e-entrepreneurship motivation for Chinese individuals from urban regions, and cultural capability exerts a higher impact on the e-entrepreneurship motivation for Chinese individuals from rural regions.

Whilst the phenomenon of e-entrepreneurship is emerging as a popular entrepreneurship area of study, little research has systematically explored individuals’ e-entrepreneurial motivation and analysed influencing factors from macro and minor aspects. According to the COM-B behaviour changing theory, this paper discovers influencing factors from environmental opportunity and personal capability units, and it is helpful to present individuals’ attitudes to the platform-based business model.

Although most Chinese ethnic minority groups (EMGs) hold conservative thinking to online-startups, the new entrepreneurial model is booming on live streaming platforms. In China’s tight cultural ecosystem, the tight cultural control would lead EMG entrepreneurs to keep conservative thinking and avoid challenging careers. Still, it would be helpful for Chinese Governments to issue systematical entrepreneurial policies and improve online-startup environment for EMGs. To discover the relationships among influencing factors and EMGs’ online-startup motivation, this paper aims to draw on the tight and loose cultural theory and the capability-opportunity-motivation-behaviour (COM-B) behaviour changing theory and establishes the research model based on China’s tight cultural ecosystem.

Through analysing 617 questionnaires from 37 EMGs based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling method, the study proves that environmental opportunity factors and personal capability factors have positive impacts on EMGs’ online-startup motivation and EMGs’ conservative thinking negatively moderates the relationship between their online-startup motivation and entrepreneurial development behaviour. In addition to testing the hypotheses, the paper also measures the importance-performance map analysis to explore additional findings of influencing factors and provide suitable suggestions for EMG entrepreneurs and related departments.

Regarding the environmental opportunity unit, both policy support and platform support significantly impact Chinese EMGs’ motivation to promote online-startups. For the personal capability unit, a platform using skills positively influences Chinese EMGs to develop online-startups. Meanwhile, EMG cultural knowledge is also necessary for EMG entrepreneurs because abundant cultural resources can be applied to live content and attract online consumers’ watching interests. Furthermore, influenced by the tight cultural control, Chinese EMGs tend to hold conservative thinking to new careers and it negatively moderates the relationship between Chinese EMGs’ online-startup motivation and their final entrepreneurial behaviours. Finally, Chinese EMGs’ online-startup motivation positively affects them to develop online-startups on live streaming platforms.

This study uses the tight and loose cultural theory to analyse the Chinese entrepreneurial environment and discover influencing factors based on the tight cultural ecosystem. Meanwhile, based on the COM-B behaviour changing theory, this paper divides influencing factors into three different units, including the environmental opportunity unit, the personal capability unit and the Tight cultural control unit. Considering the inter-relationships among these units, the research model is established based on the tight cultural ecosystem to discover Chinese EMGs’ online-startup motivation.

Entrepreneurial process strongly relies on context. The previous entrepreneurship research in developed countries over-emphasizes on its economic impact, but ignores its social impact, which leads to the slow development of entrepreneurship theories. Transitioning China provides entrepreneurs with a typical environment where opportunities and constraints coexist, which is a new research area in the field of entrepreneurship study.

Based on the grounded theory approach, this paper generalizes a local entrepreneurial process model from a multiple case study.

The paper states that the interaction among entrepreneurs, opportunities and institutional context is the core of the process. To be specific, entrepreneurial process includes an inner and an outer mechanism. The inner mechanism is based on the relations among institutional constraints, entrepreneurs and opportunities: nascent entrepreneurs, forced by institutional constraints to start a business, undergo a psychological process with entrepreneurial angst, reflective learning and effectuation and finally create business opportunities. The outer mechanism is grounded in the relations among new ventures, institutional evolution and opportunity development: new ventures facilitate institutional evolution through institutional entrepreneurship strategies, which in turn supports the ventures in the sustainable development of opportunities.

This study illuminates the social and institutional impact of entrepreneurial behavior, which is gradually fading and forgotten in modern society. The findings of the study enrich the research on entrepreneurial process, entrepreneurial cognition and institutional entrepreneurship and also provide implications for entrepreneurs.