The Impact of Regulatory Enforcement on Harmonization of Accounting Practices: Evidence from China

This paper evaluates China's regulatory enforcement in 2001 on the harmonization of accounting practices. We find that the Chinese Government's 2001 compulsory harmonization policy has made a significant contribution to reducing the differences between Chinese GAAP-based earnings and IFRS-based earnings for many line items. The decline of earnings differences is because of the firms' application of the standards rather than differences in the standards. We belive that the harmonization of accounting practices in line with IFRS can be achieved by effective enforcement of standards.