ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on China's mining sector and the impact of ownership and political connectedness and performance. It utilises a pooled data set derived from an unbalanced panel of 8,105 firm-year observations for firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE). The chapter examines differences in the role of ownership factors in the financial performance of SHSE and SZSE-listed mining and other A-share firms. Political intervention in business activities is likely to be more prevalent when institutional constraints are weak. Political connections may provide preferential government intervention for connected firms and reduced investor fears of bankruptcy. Robustness of the primary results has been assessed in several ways. First, regressions involving interactions between each regressor and mining were performed following removal of the mining industry effect. Second, the addition of data for agriculture, forestry, fishing, the banking and finance sectors.
