Chen et al. (2009) find that dividend payouts increase as the government owns more shares. However, they
suggest that the government pays high dividends to tunnel corporate resources. Similarly, Bradford et al. (2013)
find that the dividends paid by the state-controlled firms are higher than those paid by the privately-controlled
firms. However, they argue that the tunneling motive is not the key factor affecting dividend policy in China.
Rather, the main reason why state-controlled firms pay higher dividends is that they have more ability to raise
capital than privately-controlled firms.