The Visible Hand, the Invisible Hand, and the Firm's Own Hand What Propels ESG Engagement in Chinese Companies

ABSTRACT This paper surveys the empirical literature on the antecedents of corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) engagement in China, distinguishing substantive ESG actions, ESG disclosure, externally assigned ESG performance, and symbolic or reputational responses. Synthesizing 126 studies published between 2004 and 2024 in leading journals on the UTD, FT and ABS lists, we develop a tripartite analytical model in which forces at the government, market and firm levels jointly determine ESG behavior through three interaction logics, namely mutual reinforcement, substitution and contingency. The evidence identifies regulatory pressure, policy incentives, state ownership and political connections, together with media scrutiny, product market competition, institutional investors and customer demands, as well as organizational resources, governance arrangements and strategic orientation, as the principal antecedents of ESG engagement. Their relative importance varies systematically over time and across regions, industries, and ownership types, although changes in research attention do not by themselves establish a transition in Chinese ESG governance. We further document considerable theoretical fragmentation, as institutional, stakeholder, and resource‐based perspectives are widely applied but seldom combined. The survey concludes with an agenda for future research covering meta‐analytic validation, firm‐level mechanisms, heterogeneity across ESG dimensions, digitalization and cross‐country comparison.