Abstract
This chapter considers the proposition that the behaviour of Chinese multinational corporations is conditioned by the national characteristics of state structures and state–business relations. It does so by looking into the case of the Chinese oil industry. It argues that the multinational corporate behaviour in corporate governance and overseas investment in the Chinese oil industry can be explained by the institutional structure of state economic and political agencies in which the Chinese state-owned oil companies are embedded and by which they are regulated as well as by the organisational configuration of business actors in which they compete and cooperate.
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Notes
- 1.
A group of over 100 large SOEs operating in industrial sectors that are considered to be strategic for the development of the national economy and mostly evolved from various government ministries in the pre-reform era (SASAC 2015).
- 2.
The business associations initially created by the government have also become part of the hierarchical state bureaucracy, and the influence of their advocacy is constrained by the ownership of their members and by the bureaucratic level of the government departments they are associated with. On 8 July 2015, the State Council issued the ‘Overall Programme of Disassociation of Business Associations from Administrative Agencies’, requesting business associations sever their administrative relations with government ministries and departments. The process of disassociation will be carried out in a staged fashion. The business associations for the oil industry—the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation and the China Chamber of Commerce for Petroleum Industry—are not included in the list of the first batch of 148 business associations to carry out the disassociation.
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Zhang, J. (2018). State Structures, Business–State Relations, and Multinational Corporate Behaviours: A Case Study of Chinese Multinational Oil Companies. In: Zhang, X., Zhu, T. (eds) Business, Government and Economic Institutions in China. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64486-8_10
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