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This article seeks to investigate unequal access of Chinese citizens to Chinese e‐government. The study promotes wide access to declassified and uncensored Chinese government information and services published on Chinese government web sites for Chinese citizens.

This article reviews relevant literature and independent surveys as well as government survey reports in consecutive years. It investigates the current status and needs of the Chinese e‐government users – who they are, who are not and why not, as well as what they need to use and benefit from Chinese e‐government.

This article finds that the current Chinese e‐government is still at an immature stage and serves too few people. There is a need for Chinese e‐government information and services, but the awareness and usage of e‐government is very low among the Chinese people. People need all kinds of education and assistance, from general computer and internet literacy to specialized government information related education and assistance, all of which should be free or inexpensive.

This article suggests that research delving into the following questions needs to be done in future: what government information and services do people need; how do they search it; what are their experiences of using e‐government; what are their problems and solutions; and what improvements do they expect?

The study exposes the problem of unequal access of Chinese citizens to Chinese e‐government.

It is important to regularly study the status and the needs of the users along with the Chinese e‐government development. Literature review shows that the research on Chinese e‐government tends to focus on the technical aspects. There is little research on the users. This article, from a librarian's perspective, provides better knowledge of the Chinese e‐government users and their deeper need to use and benefit from e‐government information and services.

In recent decades many emerging markets (EMFs) have undertaken entrepreneurial transformations to adapt to institutional transition and industrial change. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) provided EMFs viable ways to revitalize, reconfigure, and transform successfully with the dynamic environment. Although previous research examined government roles on EMFs' CE activities, little is known about the mechanisms of how government exerts influence on CE activities. To fully understand CE of EMFs, we propose a stage model to explore specific roles governments play that affect CE activities over time. In particular, we investigate how governments' grabbing hand, helping hand, and invisible hand roles affected Chinese auto firms' CE activities at different stages from 1980 to 2016. Government involvement is summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of these roles are analyzed.

This paper focuses on the relationship between spontaneous business groups, such as the Taiwanese Businessmen Association (TBA), and the Chinese government.

In analysing the relationship between the TBAs and the Chinese government, this paper focuses on three cities, Tianjin, Kunshan and Dongguan. Furthermore it observes Taiwanese investment in mainland China from 1987 to 2004, in three sub‐periods: 1987‐1993, 1994‐1999, 2000‐2004. Statism (e.g. rational choice) appears to be a valid theoretical framework.

It was found that the Chinese government's changing interaction with Taiwanese businesses always suited their best interests at the time, which proves that the Chinese government applied rational module in interacting with Taiwanese businesses.

Rational choice is not a comprehensive approach in political science, but it is the most suitable approach to analyse the interaction between the Chinese government and Taiwanese businesses.

The first TBA was established in Beijing in 1990; nowadays there are over 100 TBAs in mainland China. It has been argued that TBAs can be seen as the emergence of a sort of civil society in mainland China; to others, they merely reflect the strong will of the Chinese government to attract foreign investment.

This paper demonstrates that Taiwanese businesses is a security asset for the Chinese government in the cross‐Strait relationship.

The authors report a field study examining the perceptions of Kenyan host-country stakeholders toward activities of Chinese businesses in their country, and the consequences of this on the legitimacy that they bestow on pertinent entities.

Interviews and observations across an eight-week period of field research revealed generally negative attitudes toward Chinese businesses, with issues pertinent to moral legitimacy prominent, notably, perceptions of corrupt practices, environmental neglect and profit expatriation.

The authors also find evidence that these negative attitudes spilled over to contaminate Kenyans’ perceptions of their own government, which respondents associated closely with the activities of Chinese entities.

The authors extend understanding of legitimacy theory and the implications of foreign business activity by highlighting that businesses may be mistaken to believe that their international business activities are politically neutral, and while host governments may believe that the economic benefits arising from attracting foreign business activity can buttress their legitimacy, the perceived activities of these businesses, in the absence of supporting institutional frameworks, may render this counterproductive.

In a state capitalist country such as China, an important influence on company reporting is the government, which can influence company decision-making. The nature and impact of how the Chinese government uses its symbolic power to promote corporate environmental reporting (CER) have been under-studied, and therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the various strategies the Chinese government uses to influence CER and how political ideology plays a key role.

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from seven Chinese companies between 2007 and 2011. And the data analysis presented is informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of symbolic power.

The Chinese government, through exercising the symbolic power, manages to build consensus, so that the Chinese government's political ideology becomes the habitus which is deeply embedded in the companies' perception of practices. In China, the government dominates the field and owns the economic capital. In order to accumulate symbolic capital, companies must adhere to political ideology, which helps them maintain and improve their social position and ultimately reward them with more economic capital. The findings show that the CER provided by Chinese companies is a symbolic product of this process.

The paper provides contributions around the themes of symbolic power wielded by the government that influence not only state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but also firms in the private sector. This paper also provides an important contribution to understanding, in the context of a strong ideologically based political system (such as China), how political ideology influences companies' decision-making in the field of CER.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

China has witnessed the emergence and rapid development of private higher education in the past three decades. As private higher education gradually takes on a more significant role in the Chinese educational system, due to the inability of the government to accommodate the growing demand for higher education, educational reform, influenced by the success of private higher education, will inevitably affect the quality and quantity of education overall.

This chapter focuses on several aspects of this development: the growth of private higher education in China, issues of finance and access, its relationship to the national system and to government policy, issues of ownership and the autonomy of private higher education, as well as the advantages and challenges of Chinese private higher education and the larger significance of its emergence in China. This study concludes that with proper management private colleges and universities will benefit from and contribute to Chinese society through multiple roles and responsibilities at their mature stage.

Although the Chinese economy has experienced a strong and rapid growth due to the success of its economic reform, the Chinese central government faces a stern fiscal decline. The fiscal problem has undermined the ability of the central government in completing many crucial governing tasks. By examining the institutional root of the fiscal problem, this paper argues that the fiscal decline is part of the ironic corollary of the decentralization strategy of China’s economic reform which produces a “weak center, strong local” outcome. To fully address the problem, China should undertake major institutional reforms to redefine as well as institutionalize the fiscal roles of different levels of government.

China’s open‐market reform and rapid economic growth have generated a tremendous surge in activity and market investment by multinational corporations (MNCs). By 2000, 400 of the 500 most famous MNCs had invested in China. One distinctive feature of China’ s business environment, its authoritarian political system, requires MNCs to practise strategic public affairs to interact constantly with the different levels of Chinese government, respond to the policies and further influence business policy formation. This paper proposes a conceptual model of MNC‐government bargaining that is composed of international political economy, dependency theory and agency theory. It then examines (1) the international and domestic influences on MNC‐government bargaining in China and (2) the strategies MNCs employed to influence Chinese laws for foreign business in their interests. A case study of the Chinese ban on direct selling operations in 1998 and Amway’s strategies to remove the ban is presented. Results suggest that effective public affairs should engage in the following activities: (1) issues management, (2) constantly and systematically analysing the MNC’s bargaining power with the host government, (3) selecting public affairs strategies based on the analysis of MNC‐government bargaining, (4) exercising relationship management, and (5) being ethical in its practice.