Replication Data for: A Seat in China’s Rubber Stamp Parliament: What is it Worth and Which Companies Receive One?

China is an autocracy and its parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is widely derided as an irrelevant ”rubber stamp” whose members wield no influence. Yet recent research shows that companies whose CEOs gain a seat on the NPC tend to see their operating income increase 1.5% and their margins increase 3%. We seek to build on these counter-intuitive findings by determining (1) what an NPC seat is worth, and (2) which companies receive one. In the first section, we apply a superior matching algorithm and code all 1000 of our companies as “coastal” or “inland” - an important variable in Chinese political economy - which we then control for. In this way, we show that the impact of NPC membership on a company’s margins and return on assets has been discounted by 60% in the present literature. Second, we go beyond these findings to explore who receives an NPC seat, speculating that political ties play a major role. Through an analysis of Chinese politics, we argue political ties correlate both with a) state-ownership of a company, b) the coastal or inland location of that company. Both of these measures of political ties are significant in explaining NPC membership, with state-owned companies four-times more likely to gain membership than private ones. We propose there are significant returns to office in this “rubber stamp” parliament, and that these accrue to the politically well-connected.