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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.

The study responds to the common concerns of authors, reviewers, and editors on writing and publishing high-quality literature review (LR) studies. First, we evolved the background and decision elements on the five parameters of a quality LR paper: Planning, Operationalizing, Writing, Embedding, and Reflecting (POWER), from the editorials and guiding literature. Statistical procedure and refinement of 256 responses from writers, reviewers, and editors revealed 37 decision elements. Finally, a multicriteria-decision-making approach was applied to the detailed responses from the lead editors of ABDC, Scopus, ABS, and WoS journals, and 31 decision elements were found strong enough to represent these five parameters on the quality of LR studies. All five parameters are found important to be considered. However, a high priority is suggested for embedding (the results coming out of the review) and operationalizing (the process of conducting the review), whereas reflection, writing, and planning of LR papers still remain important. The purpose of the POWER framework is to overcome the challenges and decision dilemmas faced by writers and decision-makers. The POWER framework acts as a guiding tool to conduct LR studies in general and business management scholars in specific ways. In addition, this study provides a checklist (Table 6) and template (Appendix A1) of a quality LR study to its stakeholders.

When college entrance examinations act as gatekeepers to modern-sector jobs, the entire education system then becomes oriented toward these examinations. This occurs at the expense of learning for the sake of learning and other aspects of education that address the holistic development and well-being of students. In recent years in China, there has been growing concern that examination competition has compromised the quality of classroom teaching and learning and is detrimental to the development of skills necessary for the global knowledge economy. These concerns have given rise to a far-reaching set of education reforms known as the New Curriculum reforms which have aimed to move students to the center of teaching and learning and to transform teaching and learning so as to foster such capacities as creativity, innovation, collaboration, self-expression, engagement, enjoyment of learning, inquiry skills, problem-solving abilities, and ability to apply knowledge in practice. In this chapter, we use videotaped high school New Curriculum demonstration lessons to examine teaching and learning practices that are regarded as exemplary in the current reform context. We investigate how teachers are negotiating the competing demands of preparing students for the examinations and addressing the aims of the New Curriculum reforms. The nature of student participation in the classroom emerges in the analysis as a key indicator of the success of this negotiation.