Abstract
Regarding China’s convergence with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), contrary to concerns on the resistance associated with the socialist nature of the country and its economy, the process seems to be relatively smooth compared to other current and former socialist countries. In this paper, we seek to conduct a “Critical Discourse Analysis” (CDA) on government discourses and academic publications related to the evolution of China’s national accounting standards within the context of the Chinese economy and that of the globalisation. The findings indicate that the Chinese domestic accounting researchers appear to be closely attached to the government, who plays a leading role in this event, and that the efficient convergence with the IFRS is largely because of Chinese authority’s strong willingness to promote a neoliberal ideology through this process, in the hope of speeding up China’s financial and economic integration into the global market.
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Notes
- 1.
As indicated on the IFRS Foundation website and also confirmed in Ministry of Finance (MOF) (2010), the mission was accomplished on 2005.
- 2.
For simplicity, we refer to both International Accounting Standards (IAS) and the IFRS as IFRS in this article.
- 3.
http://www.ifrs.org/, website of the IFRS Foundation and the IASB.
- 4.
http://www.mof.gov.cn/ , and notably the website of its subordinate Accounting Regulatory Department (ARD): http://kjs.mof.gov.cn/.
- 5.
http://www.cnki.net/. As described on its “Introduction” page, the CNKI is “the most comprehensive gateway of knowledge of China” that endowed with a “monopolist status” (Zhao and Qiu 2005). This database is mostly used to acquire academic papers of domestic researchers in this study.
- 6.
Underlined by the author, same as for all the other underlined parts in the verbatim in italics below.
- 7.
The CICPA is characterised by features of a government institution rather than a pure accounting professional association, according to the definition on its official website: an organisation under the guidance of the MOF and the State Council. (Available at http://www.cicpa.org.cn/, last consulted on 12/2/2014)
- 8.
This discourse is judged as “typical” for the reason that the speech has been quoted in leading financial and economic news outlet repeatedly.
- 9.
Full speech (Chinese version) available at Chinese academic journal Finance and Accounting, 2011 (8), one of China’s top journals in the domain of accounting. The text quoted here, as well as the other texts below that are originally written in Chinese, is translated by the author.
- 10.
Full speech (Chinese version) available at http://kjs.mof.gov.cn/, last consulted on 12/2/2014.
- 11.
The following discourses are judged as “typical” based on the number of times the articles have been cited.
- 12.
A convenient solution for people (especially for government officials) to obtain graduate degrees while maintaining their current positions at work. See for instance Lee (1991) and for more explanations.
- 13.
According to the official website of the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC, a party school is “the highest institution of learning charged with the task of training senior and middle-ranking leading cadres of the Party and fostering Marxist theoretical cadres. As an important organ directly under the Central Committee of the CPC, it is an important bastion for studying and publicizing Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought and the System of Theories of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and a furnace for tempering the Party spirit. It is also a research institute of philosophy and other social sciences of the CPC.” Information available at http://www.ccps.gov.cn/, last consulted on 16/2/2014.
- 14.
The most appropriate example to be mentioned here is the Institute of Fiscal Science of the MOF. The above cited article Wang (2005) is one of the institute’s research publications in the AR journal.
- 15.
Available at http://kjs.mof.gov.cn/zaixianfuwu/wszt/, last consulted on 26/2/2014.
- 16.
A good example of this is the amendment to IAS 16 and IAS 41, originally proposed by the Malaysian Accounting Standards Board, in relation to the biological assets.
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Wang, X. (2016). China. The Role of the Government and Academics in the IFRS Convergence Process of Chinese Accounting Standards. In: Bensadon, D., Praquin, N. (eds) IFRS in a Global World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28225-1_16
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