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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.

This paper aims to quest the strategies and paths of Chinese automobile firms for being world class. It analyzes their strengths and potentials in comparison with the development experience of the global examples and provides policy recommendations for cultivating world-class automobile firms.

The authors apply the analytic hierarchy process method to evaluate the competitiveness of automobile firms with multiple indicators.

The evaluation results suggest that Chinese automobile firms still lagged behind their world-class peers. Especially, Chinese domestic firms developed unevenly so that they could not make progress in the core parametric dimensions. Nevertheless, Chinese firms could achieve world class, at least in some niche segments, supported by its accumulated technological capacity and tremendous market size.

This research is the first scholarly work to evaluate the competitiveness of Chinese automobile firms and provides insightful comments on its industrial policies in the automobile industry. This may be valuable for policymaking in the automobile sector of China and other developing economies.

This paper aims to explore the functionality of long tail markets (LTM), where the consumers cannot be reached or are ignored by the traditional mainstream businesses, in new products and business development.

First, the authors review two Chinese entrepreneurial practices in the Fintech sector and low-speed electric vehicles (LSEV) and describe their stylized facts; second, they explore a possible theoretical LTM framework to underscore these practices; third, they make a connection between LTM and existing business models and analyze its significance and practical implications in business, in particular, in developing economies.

The LTM business approach has helped Chinese companies in the Fintech sector and LSEVs gain global attention. The success factors of LTM for businesses are identifying a specific customer base, being aware of localization products and playing skillfully with regulations; the LTM approach has several overlaps with existing studies on niche products and base of the pyramid market.

Based on some emerging and attractive business practices in China, this paper offers a valuable attempt to theorize them as long tail phenomenon. The LTM thesis provides a potential framework to reference for similar methods elsewhere and may illuminate entrepreneurship to be explored in similar markets.