Factors Affecting Internal Control Information Disclosure in Chinese Companies

As the chinese economic development accelerated, chinese public companies become bigger and the external and internal business environment has got complicated. Due to the sudden environmental change, internal control is playing a significant role for corporate governance in the Chinese companies. Therefore, establishing an effective internal control system and discoursing internal control information to a certain extent has become requirements for the retention of investor confidence in China as well as other countries. The motivation of this study is to examine the level of internal control information disclosure in annual financial reports, and also to see which factors are related to the level of internal control information disclosure in the Chinese public companies. We find that government ownership, auditors’s reputation and leverage have positive influence on the level of internal control information disclosure with the sample of 46 manufacturing companies listed on the Shanhai Stock Exchange. However, we find no significant effects of the proportion of outside directors and profitability on the level of internal control information disclosure. This result shows a specific feature of internal control information disclosure in Chinese business environment, that may not be generalized in other countries.