audit fees directly, although our review of the overseas literature indicates no such increase. Chinese researchers,
in contrast, have paid increased attention to the issue in recent years. Drawing on the ownership perspective,
Zhang and Zhang (2005) find the audit fees of state-owned listed companies to be low relative to those of
other types of firms and Gao and Gao (2008) report the stockholding ratio of managers to be significantly
associated with audit fees. In contrast, Zhang and Xu (2005) show there to be no significant relationship
between audit fees and the proportion of state-owned shares. Li and Wang (2006) examine the role played
by board of director characteristics and find the audit fee rate to be significantly and negatively related to
the number of independent directors on the board, but insignificantly related to the number of board meetings
and the existence of an audit committee. Using a framework of internal corporate governance and data on Ashare
listed companies from 2001 to 2003, Liu and Hu (2006) analyze the relationship between audit pricing
and agency costs, and find that a number of the corporate governance factors that may influence agency costs
(i.e., the proportion of independent directors on the board, the stockholding ratio of senior managers and
president–CEO duality) also have a significant influence on audit fees, subject to the existence of other variables.
Cai (2007) investigates the influence of corporate governance structure on audit fees from the perspective
of the audit service provider and provides evidence to show that accounting firms charge companies with a
larger board of directors higher audit fees than they do non-state-owned companies featuring CEO duality or
a moderate managerial share ratio.