With the development of China's economy, more and more Chinese firms started multinational operation. Different with the developed countries’ multinational firms, the multinational level of Chinese firms is obviously still in the development stage. In China's academic research, many scholars have studied the relationship of firms’ M-P (multinationality-performance). Like other academic studies in developed countries, they have also drawn various results, such as linear relationships, nonlinear relationships (S-shaped, U-shaped, inverted U-shaped, W-shaped, etc.). This paper uses the panel data of 242 multinational firms listed in China's A-shares from 2008 to 2016. The empirical research method is used to study the relationship between market indicators, accounting indicators and M-P, and the firm's asset management efficiency is also studied. The empirical results show that market indicators and financial indicators have both a significant positive effect on M-P. Whereas, the asset turnover rate plays a negative role in regulating M-P. It shows that Chinese manufacturing firms can accelerate the process of multinationality by expanding the market and managing corporate finances.

Purpose - Economic globalization provides firms with a new channel to gain benefits from foreign countries. Therefore, using the real MNEs, this paper set China’s firms as an example to explore the relationship between multinationality and performance. Research design, data, and methodology - Panel data from 2008 to 2017 was used and 390 multinational firms listed in China’s A-share market was selected. Additionally, related econometric methods were employed to analyze the relationship between multinationality and performance in this study. The return on assets was treated as a dependent variable, and the sales of a firm, the firm age, the debt asset ratio of a firm, the ratio of foreign sales to total sales and the enterprise properties were treated as independent variables. All of these factors were used to conduct an empirical analysis. Results - The empirical findings in this study revealed that there is a linear relationship between multinationality and performance, as well as that non state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) have a greater effect on the relationship between multinationality and performance than that of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Conclusions - On the basis of evidences this paper provided, China’s government should take measures in the future to help China’s firms when they fulfil international economic activities.