When do mining companies broadly redistribute resource rents? evidence from China

• This research investigates whether and how mining companies redistribute their resource rents. • Redistributive variations exist within state-owned mining enterprises, which are typically tasked with greater social responsibilities. • Locally embedded mining companies tend to redistribute resource rents more broadly to host communities. • Locally embedded companies with a lower degree of bureaucratization can broadly redistribute resource rents through informal approaches, whereas higher bureaucratization constrains broad redistribution primarily to formal institutional mechanisms. • This paper emphasizes broader rents redistribution as a pathway to break the local resource curse. When mineral resource extraction primarily benefits business and political elites, local communities often suffer from adverse socio-economic consequences, which have been increasingly recognized as the local resource curse. However, some mining companies redistribute resource rents to broader society, yet this variation remains understudied. Based on intensive fieldwork across four cities in three Chinese provinces, this comparative case study examines redistributive patterns within state-owned enterprises, which constitute a cornerstone of China's resource sector and are assigned more social responsibilities. The analysis reveals that local embeddedness of mining companies determines their motives for broader redistribution beyond compensation requirements, while the degree of corporate bureaucratization influences whether redistribution is implemented through institutionalized or informal mechanisms. By examining interactions among the state, companies, and society, as well as interplays within a company, this research demonstrates that local governments and communities can strategically foster company embeddedness to align corporate development with local welfare objectives, providing implications that extend beyond the Chinese context.