Journal of Business & Economic Policy

An Exploratory Study of Interlocking Directorates in China and Cross Country Comparisons
Zongming Tang, Liaoliao Li

Abstract
The present paper examines interlocking directorates in China using social network analysis method and makes comparisons with 12 industrial countries: the United States, Great Britain, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, and Hong Kong. Network measures in our investigation include density, centrality, clustering coefficients, distance, components and structural holes. We observe that interlocking directorates have become progressively more common in China during study period (2000-2012). Using a sub-dataset that contains top 250 listed companies in China in 2012, we find that interlocking directorates in China are smaller, less dense, and less clustering in comparison to networks in industrial countries. China is still at an early development stage of interlocking directorates.

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