PurposeThe purpose of this paper is threefold: it conducts a review of the literature identifying the challenges facing scholars of whom, English is their second language; it analyses the perspectives of authors on issues they consider significant in publishing China-centric research; and it provides a reflective and insightful analysis of the articles published the special issue.Design/methodology/approachThe assertions raised in this paper were drawn from the research evidence in published articles on qualitative accounting research and China-centric research in accounting. The analysis of self-reflective comments provided by authors were analysed inductively using thematic analysis to identify and explore the issues considered important to the authors.FindingsResearch on accounting practice is primarily rooted in concepts developed in the Western-anglophone countries. China mimics this research when it adopts positivist methodologies. This paper highlights the advantages of qualitative research and the use of Chinese cultural theories (Buddhism, Taoism Confucianism) providing a human dimension to understanding accounting practice.Originality/valueThis study notes the benefits of Chinese cultural theories to understand the practice of accounting in China that is under-use in accounting research. The integration of traditional Chinese cultural philosophies underpinned by qualitative methods of research (case study, interviews, observation and document analysis) offers a novel perspective that extends the scope of research beyond the conventional economic analysis of organisational financial performance.

While oral history still has a marginal role in accounting literature in general, it has not been applied at all in relation to the history of Chinese accounting. Within broader research on accounting change in China, this paper uses oral history to investigate patterns of the career of accountants in China. We interviewed 21 retired accountants, aging from 60 to 90 at the time of the interview, asking them to share their professional experience in open and unstructured talk. We reconstruct individual experiences, which provides insights into the working lives of our interviewees. Unlike previous studies that only focus on influential informants, we investigate Chinese accounting changes as they emerge from the collective memory of everyday accountants. Taking a pluralist perspective, we collect non-archival data to illustrate the education and common elements in accounting career development. Our approach takes a 'view from below', underlining the limitations of top-down perspectives in most of the literature on accounting change in China. The findings contribute to our understanding of accounting changes in China and their social and economic impacts on the profession while providing interesting implications for oral history in accounting in general.

In our paper “The Chinese accounting profession in the People’s Republic: A preliminary understanding from an oral history perspective” (Critical Perspectives on Accounting, forthcoming 2022), we investigate Chinese accounting changes by reconstructing individual accountants’ experience in the past 70 years. We interviewed 21 retired accountants and asked them to share their professional life. Their narratives show how the negative impacts of radical political movements shape the early period of the profession. We provide a synopsis of the changes and the professional profiles in table 1 and table 3 on the paper. The following two parts unfold these tables. The first part provides a summary of the major political events that impacted our interviewees; the second part aim at profiling careers of 19 interviewees in a more extensive way than what was allowed in the paper due to words limits. In a sense these notes can be seen as a sort of virtual appendix of the paper.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between various governance mechanisms and the transparency level by using a sample of the top 200 Chinese charity foundations on net assets. Design/methodology/approach Three types of governance forces are examined, including the board, the management and the capital providers. The Foundation Transparency Index (FTI), published by Chinese Foundation Center, is used as a proxy for the transparency level. Findings The evidences show that for the public foundations that can elicit fund from the public, providing compensation to the foundation managers could encourage them to increase the transparency level. Furthermore, the sophisticated donors also represent a useful governance force. For the non-public foundations that can only seek donors through private contacts, getting more members in their supervisory board and having more government grants are helpful in improving their transparency. The results are robust even after controlling for lagged FTI and other characteristics of foundations. And the transparency level is positively associated with the international connections for both types of foundations. Research limitations/implications This research is based on a limited sample. The results can hardly generalize to the other smaller foundations. However, the results are still meaningful for to the legislators, regulators and managers of Chinese charity foundations. Because the result implies that the overseas donors are effective monitors that could improve the foundation transparency, the newly published law may weaken this governance force. Originality/value This is the first paper that studies the governance of Chinese charity foundations. By using a third-party index to proxy for the transparency, the results complement existing literature.

This research investigates how the information disclosure of NPO foundations influence the donations they receive from overseas individuals and organizations. Using a sample of top 100 foundations, we test the relation between the transparency level and subsequent overseas donations. We use FTI, a transparency index published by Chinese Foundation Center, as our proxy for transparency. The regression results suggest that the transparency level is positively associated with subsequent foreign donation received after controlling for current level of FTI and other factors influencing foreign donations. The impact is different between public foundations and nonpublic foundations. It is also different between institutional donations and individual donations. This finding is generally robust to controls for various organization specifications. Our research has implications for foundations which want to attract international donations.

Educators and regulators world-wide are recognizing a range of problems that are arising in both teaching and implementation of IFRS due to language and translation issues. The research question asks what it is about the English in which IFRS are written that causes problems for an effective understanding of IFRS by a Chinese undergraduate student cohort. All 88 participants, with Chinese as their first language, were studying accounting at New Zealand and Chinese Universities. They translated, and then independently back-translated, four sentences of IFRS chosen for the research. There were 168 back-translations useable for the analysis. This study highlights the specific problems students face in understanding the specialized English of accounting, and in particular illustrates problems with the syntax and lexicon used in IFRS. The significance of the findings of this paper originate in the method used; there are other studies which tackle the issue of translatability but only using a quantitative approach. The analysis of these sentences from IFRS is detailed enough to illustrate exactly how problems arise in syntax and the lexicon. We suggest what steps educators may take to alleviate the degree to which pedagogical outcomes are compromised by such issues of understandability.

In this paper, we present evidence that firms with concentrated ownership manage earnings when their large shareholders have an incentive to do so. The large shareholders of Chinese public firms often pledge their shares for loans. Before the split share reform in 2006, loan terms were based on the book value of the firm. Since then, the share price has become critical for share pledged loans. We postulate that the reform triggered large shareholders' incentive to influence financial reports. Using a sample of non-state-owned enterprises, we test the effect of share pledges on earnings smoothing and how this effect changes after the reform. Our results suggest that share pledging firms smooth their earnings more than other firms, but these results are only found after the split share reform. Accordingly, our results provide more direct evidence on the effect of ownership concentration on financial reporting.

文章通过考察国际会计准则理事会应循程序的有效性，对国际会计准则理事会准则制定的独立性进行评价。以国际会计准则理事会2006年概念框架讨论稿征求意见截止时所收到的179份评论意见为样本，考察了这些意见来源，并对比了讨论稿、评论意见和2008年国际会计准则理事会发布的征求意见稿，得出结论：国际会计准则委员会收集的评论意见来源广泛，并且对国际会计概念框架的改进具有显著的影响，建议我国各方积极参与评论。

内部控制管理层自我评价和注册会计师提供的外部审计是判断内部控制有效性的两个重要维度.本文对近十年来内部控制与审计领域的相关文献进行了梳理与回顾,重点对Wolfe等人于2009年在Accounting Review上发表的《接受或驳回:论管理层沟通策略是否影响审计人员对于内部控制偏差的评价》一文进行详细解读,试图解释影响内部控制审计质量的因素及其作用机理,并结合国内相关领域的研究现状及研究特点,提出中国制度背景下相关领域研究的一些思路与建议.

中国企业会计准则体系实现了与国际会计准则的实质性趋同,采用了相似的原则导向观,在准则条文中使用了许多模糊的术语作为确认、计量和披露的标准.国际文献普遍研究了或有事项准则中的语言概率问题,对国际会计准则中不确定性术语的应用研究只限于在发达市场经济之间的对比,忽视了这些标准在没有职业判断传统的转轨经济国家的应用情况.在调查了中国会计准则中主要不确定性术语被中国会计师的解读情况后发现,中国会计师对某些词汇也存在较低的理解一致性.被明确定义的不确定性术语的理解一致性显著高于没有被定义的,但是同一词汇在不同情景下的理解存在显著差异.因此,准则制定机构应当关注那些理解不一致的准则,采取措施确保原则导向的新会计准则得到广泛一致的应用.

文章以中国上市A股公司为研究样本,以2004-2012年具有好消息的上市公司年报披露为观察对象,实证研究了拥有利好消息的公司为何要延迟披露信息.研究结论发现,上述公司延迟披露信息,不能被会计稳健性理论所解释,实证结果亦与信息不对称的相关理论背离.文章结论表明,拥有利好消息的公司延迟披露信息,与较为及时披露信息的公司相比,其信息披露前的股价与市场同步性低、交易量高,股东持股集中度在窗口期前发生了显著增加的变化特征.这表明,利好消息公司延迟披露信息,一种关于其动机的理论解释是该类公司通过延迟披露信息可以为内幕交易获得时间窗口,从而帮助其在股票交易市场中获利.文章预期对理解新兴市场的金融、会计行为,丰富完善信息披露文献,以及为强化监管提供经验证据支持有重要作用.

通过试验对会计硕士专业学位研究生参加课堂讨论的效果以及影响其课堂参与积极性的因素进行研究.第一个准实验表明,积极参与课堂讨论的学生,学业表现更好.增加课堂参与占总成绩的比重,可以激励学生更多地参与课堂讨论.在对课堂参与评分时,学生自评比教师评分更有效.第二个实验的结果表明虽然学生主动发言更好,但点名提问并不会显著降低学生课堂参与的愉悦感,课堂参与和学习体验具有正相关性.

According to Law of the PRC on Bid Invitation and Bidding ,bid invitation and biding shall be conducted in adherence to certain principles .And the validity period of bidding is also strictly stipulated .The bidding documents cannot be valid permanently and cannot be invalid on the second day after submission .So the validity period is stipulated for the bidding documents and the process of bid in‐vitation and bidding should be completed within the validity period .However ,during the teaching and practice ,students easily confuse validity period of bidding with the closing date for bidding .This paper has a discussion on the concept of validity period of bidding to distinguish the meaning and then guide practice .

随着当今建筑行业的蓬勃兴起,建筑工程项目规模越来越大,工艺要求越来越复杂,建设单位对承包商的资质、能力等方面的要求越来越高,而联合体承揽工程正好可以满足这种需求.联合体投标可以降低企业经营风险,优化社会资源.本文从联合体投标的概念入手,分析联合体投标的必要条件,包括各方资质、共同投标协议等,最后分析各方需要承担的法律责任,以期更好地为工程实践服务.