At its 19th National Congress, the Communist Party of China vowed to "strengthen the financial sector’s ability to serve the real economy." However, many studies provide evidence of the opposite trend, a problematic “transition from the real to the virtual,” among Chinese enterprises....

China's slowing economic growth and rapid urbanization have made local government debt financing a significant issue. This study uses a sample of China’s provincial government data for the 2006–2012 period to examine the effect of the disclosure of financial information by local governments...