Characteristics Of Local Officials And The Credit Behavior Of State-owned Enterprises

Different from the capitalist countries,China’s market economic system emphasizes that the market should be compatible with the country’s most basic socialist system,and should pay attention to the central government’s "top-level design" and unified regulation.As the backbone of the development of the national economy,state-owned enterprises must play an important role in resolutely implementing the government’s decision-making and deployment under the actual guidance of the government.The various corporate actions and activities that they demonstrate will reflect the will and policy orientation of the government.In this kind of national situation,local state-owned enterprises have become powerful "helpers" for local government officials to achieve economic growth.However,many domestic and foreign scholars believe that when studying the relationship between local government and enterprises,they should not only stay at the "surface level" of local government behavior,but should go deeper into the level of local officials.The government is a "black box" that cannot be seen through,and the various external features embodied in it are actually the embodiment of the motivation and behavioral will of the internal individual officials.Therefore,to study and understand government behavior from the root cause,we should push the focus of attention to the officials who are the main players,and study from "government and enterprises" to "officials and enterprises."As an "economic rational person" with various "self-interested" needs,officials usually start from the perspective of their own political needs,especially the promotion needs,rather than the maximization of social welfare.China’s state-owned enterprises have special administrative functions and are often the backbone of the government’s specific economic policies.In this kind of national situation,local state-owned enterprises have become powerful "helpers" for local government officials to achieve their performance indicators.Local government officials will also let the resources they have mastered to the state-owned enterprises to the maximum extent possible.As a credit resource that is one of the effective means of investment and financing,government intervention will be stronger when redistributed.On the one hand,when state-owned enterprises under the “endorsement” of local governments carry out credit financing,and they have advantages over private enterprises in both credit costs and credit resources;on the other hand,China’s GDP growth rate is the main performance evaluation indicator.Under the promotion system,bank credit resources are an important way for local officials to promote regional economic growth and achieve political promotion goals.When local officials change,the new chief officials will have strong incentives to intervene in the redistribution of bank credit resources.Political ideas and personal governance characteristics will also have an impact on such interventions.Therefore,using the bank credit behavior of local state-owned enterprises to measure the political behavior of local government officials has certain theoretical support.The current study finds that when local governments redistribute bank credit resources,they will conduct targeted guidance,direct or indirect intervention,which will affect the efficiency of regional financial allocation,and even breed power rent-seeking and financial corruption.However,scholars’ research on local officials is limited to the level of provincial officials,and there is less literature to discuss from the level of government officials at prefecture-level cities.In addition,when local government officials are replaced,fiscal decentralization,promotion incentives,and the characteristics of officials themselves will inevitably have an impact on the bank credit behavior of local state-owned enterprises.Based on the above logic,this paper will go from the prefecture-level city government to the prefecture-level city officials to discuss the impact of local government officials on the credit behavior of state-owned enterprises,with a view to the “political view” and “promotion” of government officials.The motivation theory provides direct evidence.In general,the article breaks through the limitations of the previous research on the relationship between government and enterprises.From the perspective of officials and state-owned enterprises,the article examines the impact of local officials on the bank credit behavior and credit term structure of state-owned enterprises.At the same time,the article extends the research of existing provincial officials to the prefecture-level government officials,and the research on the governance of the chief officials from the macro level that affects economic development to the micro-perspective of corporate bank credit behavior.Finally,we put forward suggestions: in practice,the sustainable development of state-owned enterprises should start from the two aspects of increasing the difficulty of intervention by local officials and weakening the power of intervention.