We examine the impact of mixed ownership on the performance of venture capital (VC) firms in China. We use successful/unsuccessful exits from VC-financed entrepreneurial companies and number of patent applications by VC-financed companies as proxies for VC firms’ performance. Consistent with existing research on the inferior performance of SOEs relative to non-SOEs, we find that on average government-controlled VC firms (GVCs) underperform domestic private investors-controlled VC firms (PVCs). More importantly, we find that introducing minority private investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of GVCs. However, we find no evidence that introducing minority government investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of PVCs. Our results provide relevant information to the ongoing debate on the role of the government investors and private investors in developing the VC industry in emerging markets.

When the government is simultaneously the owner and regulator of the securities market, the evolution of securities market regulation follows a path of compulsory institutional change. China’s government authorities have played a dual role in this process by acting both as the securities market regulator and the controlling owner of the stock exchanges. This paper uses the evolution of China’s securities market regulation from 1980 to 2007 to illustrate this theoretical framework. It provides unique evidence of how securities regulation evolves in response to government direction and supervision if the government is both the owner and the regulator of the securities market.