Paper co-authored by UM Faculty of Law professor and student published in BFSU Legal Science

A paper co-authored by Iau Teng Pio, associate dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Macau (UM), and his PhD student Tian Yu, titled The Dilemmas and Future Prospects of the Board-Centric Corporate Governance Model—In the Context of the Company Law Revision, has been published in BFSU Legal Science.

The paper notes that China is currently facing a distorted governance dilemma where ‘formal board-centrism’ coexists with substantive ‘shareholder primacy’. It argues that a board-centrism model is more suitable for China’s current governance framework in terms of both efficiency and legal principles. In response to the limitations of the revised Company Law, the paper calls for further restrictions on the operational powers of shareholders’ meetings and proposes granting greater authority to boards of directors through a ‘general authorisation plus negative list’ approach. It also recommends developing a more diversified governance framework that allows companies to adopt differentiated power-sharing arrangements based on their corporate type, with the aim of enhancing governance efficiency.

Founded in 2019, BFSU Legal Science is an academic journal hosted by the Law School of Beijing Foreign Studies University and published by the Social Sciences Academic Press. The journal promotes the study of Chinese legal issues from an international perspective and is dedicated to supporting the development of the rule of law in China as well as legal exchanges between China and the international community. It was consecutively recognised by CNKI as a ‘high-impact academic journal’ in 2024 and 2025.