In the wave of digital and intelligent transformation, corporate governance is undergoing profound changes. This paper, from the perspective of green governance and sustainable development, explores the new trends in corporate governance under this background, such as data-driven decision-making and the application of intelligent technologies in supervision; analyzes the new challenges faced, including data security and privacy protection, and the digital divide; and based on relevant theories, combined with practical cases and using data models and other methods, explores new paths, aiming to provide theoretical and practical guidance for enterprises to achieve the coordinated and simultaneous progress of digitalization, intelligentization, greenization, and sustainable development.

The economic institutionalist literature often suggests that sub-optimal institutional arrangements impart unique distortions in China, and excessive corporate debt is a symptom of this condition. However, lax monetary policies after the global financial crisis, and specifically, quantitative easing have led to concerns about debt bubbles under a wide range of institutional regimes. This study draws on data from Chinese listed firms, supplemented by numerous macroeconomic control variables, to isolate the effect of international capital flows from other drivers of firm leverage. We conclude that the rise in, and distribution of, Chinese corporate debt can partly be as-cribed to the effects of monetary policy outside of China and that Chinese institutional features amplify these effects. Whilst Chinese firms are affected by developments in the global financial ecosystem, domestic institutional realities and distortions may unevenly add their own particular effects, providing further support for and extending the variegated capitalism literature.

As digital transformation strategies have emerged as a primary approach for enterprises to enhance their Total Factor Productivity (TFP), it is crucial to empirically examine the impact of these strategies on TFP. For this purpose, this study considers these transformation strategies as a quasi-natural experiment and employees a propensity score-weighted difference-indifferences methodology on data from Chinese firms listed on the A-share market between 2007 and 2020. The key findings include: (1) digital transformation has a significant positive influence on TFP; (2) Generalized boosted regression trees analysis reinforces this finding after controlling for other TFP determinants; (3) notably, non-state-owned and technology-intensive enterprises exhibit a more distinct enhancement in TFP following digital transformation. These results underscore the need for firms to increase investment in research and development capabilities and digital competencies.

Using data from Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015 to 2022, we employ a difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the impact of bankruptcy regimes, marked by the establishment of bankruptcy courts, on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP). The results show a significant decline in TFP among firms in regions following the establishment of bankruptcy courts. This finding remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism tests reveal that establishing bankruptcy courts increases firms’ risk aversion incentives by endowing creditors with excessive rights. Consequently, firms tend to reduce liabilities, curtail R&D investment, and accumulate liquid assets as coping measures, ultimately contributing to a decline in TFP. Furthermore, this effect is more pronounced for firms with high financial risk. However, the improvement of the market mechanism can alleviate the negative impact of bankruptcy courts excessively strengthening creditor protection. Specifically, when firms are located in regions with weak government intervention and strong financial development, as well as in market environments with low uncertainty and strong competition, this negative impact can be mitigated. These findings provide fresh insights into the dual nature of creditor protection and offer valuable references for governments to improve the bankruptcy legal system.

We evaluate the impact of digital finance on the ESG performance of manufacturing enterprises and whether digital and traditional finance play a complementary or substitute role in promoting the ESG performance. First, we find that developing digital finance can alleviate financing constraints and promote technological innovation, thereby increasing enterprises' investment in environmental, social, and governance, providing sufficient technical support, and improving their ESG performance. Furthermore, digital finance and traditional finance have a direct impact on the ESG performance and further enhance their influence through complementary effects. Therefore, this paper may provide a valuable reference for finance to support manufacturing enterprises' development effectively.

The process of internationalization of China’s banking industry began in 1917. After a hundred years of development, China’s banking internationalization has made great achievements. However, there is still a big gap between China’s banking industry and the financial institutions in some developed countries in the field of internationalization. In the process of internationalization, China's banking industry are now still facing the dilemma of backward development concept, lack of effective risk control system and international talents. This thesis mainly introduces the history, present situation and difficulties of the internationalization of China’s banking industry. The first part gives a description to the history of the internationalization of China’s banking industry, which starts in the year of 1917. An analysis of the current situation of China’s banking industry’ internationalization is given in the second part of this article. And the third part summarizes the difficulties that are faced by China’s banking industry.

Under the guidance of the dual-carbon target, the development of the carbon financial system is of great significance to compensate for the gap between green and low-carbon investment. Considering the current state of the development of carbon financial system, China has initially formed a carbon financial system, including participants, carbon financial products and macro and micro operation structures, but the system is still in the initial development stage. Given the current restrictions on the development of carbon finance, it can be seen that there are still problems such as unreasonable economic structure, insufficient market construction, single product category, low utilization rate and urgent construction of relevant judicial guarantee system. Therefore, the system should be improved at the economic level and the legal level. The economic level includes adjusting the layout of economic development structure, strengthening the construction of market infrastructure, encouraging the diversification of carbon financial products and strengthening publicity and education promotion strategies. The legal level includes improving the top-level design, formulating judicial interpretation to promote carbon financial trading, promoting commercial law amendment, and promoting the linkage mechanism between specialized environmental justice and carbon finance and other safeguard measures. Finally, improving the carbon finance system is required to promote and protect the orderly development of carbon finance. To promote the reform of the pattern of economic development, the concept of ecological and environmental protection in the financial sector needs to be implemented to form an overall pattern of pollution reduction, carbon reduction and synergistic efficiency improvement.

Enterprise innovation is a hot topic in current academic research. Taking the demonstration city of social credit system construction implemented in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper investigates whether the construction of social credit system can improve enterprise innovation. The study finds that the construction of social credit system effectively enhances enterprise innovation. Mechanism test shows that the construction of social credit system escalates the scale and duration of enterprise loans, thereby fostering enterprise innovation. These findings present insights that the pivotal role of informal institutions, such as the social credit system, in facilitating the upgrading of industrial structures and augmenting the quality of economic development.

This study investigates the role of financial development in shaping the relationship between FDI and firm innovation, based on Chinese firm-level dataset during 2008-2014. Our findings reveal that bank deregulation significantly enhances the positive effect of FDI on firm innovation. We also find that firms with greater financial constraints and those located in cities with lower levels of bank competition exhibit a more pronounced response. These results underscore the importance of considering financial market conditions and highlight the role of financial constraints and bank competition as crucial channels through which bank deregulation influences the effect of FDI on firm innovation.

We conceptually identify and empirically verify the features distinguishing FinTech platforms from non-financial platforms using marketplace lending data. Specifically, we highlight three key features: (i) Long-term contracts introducing default risk at both the individual and platform levels; (ii) Lenders’ investment diversification to mitigate individual default risk; (iii) Platform-level default risk leading to greater asymmetric user stickiness and rendering platform-level cross-side network effects (p-CNEs), a novel metric we introduce, crucial for adoption and market dynamics. We incorporate these features into a model of two-sided FinTech platform with potential failures and endogenous participation and fee structures. Our model predicts lenders’ single-homing, occasional lower fees for borrowers, asymmetric p-CNEs, and the predictive power of lenders’ p-CNEs in forecasting platform failures. Empirical evidence from China’s marketplace lending industry, characterized by frequent market entries, exits, and strong network externalities, corroborates our theoretical predictions. We find that lenders’ p-CNEs are systematically lower on declining or well-established platforms compared to those on emerging or rapidly growing platforms. Furthermore, lenders’ p-CNEs serve as an early indicator of platform survival likelihood, even at the initial stages of market development. Our findings provide novel economic insights into the functioning of multi-sided FinTech platforms, offering valuable implications for both industry practitioners and financial regulators.