Government Shareholding and the Value of China's Modern Firms

This paper documents the ultimate shareholding structures of 826 corporations listed on China's stock market and finds large equity holdings of the government. Using a panel data set, this paper further finds that corporate value decreases with an increased size of government shareholding when the government is a small shareholder. When the government equity holding is sufficiently large, corporate value increases with increased government shareholding. This U-shaped relationship between government shareholding and corporate value is interpreted by the aggregated impacts of the grabbing and helping hands of the government shareholder.