Abstract: Under the background of economic globalization, international expansion of enterprises has become a common phenomenon, but existing literature discusses little about whether and foreign shareholding will play a role in the decision-making of the enterprise internationalization process. In view of this, using empirical data of Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2016, this paper focuses on exploring the logical relationship between foreign shareholding and the decision-making of the enterprise internationalization process, as well as the moderating effect of negative performance gaps and negative forecast gaps between them. The research comes to the following coclusions. First, foreign shareholding has a significant positive effect on both internationalization pace and the irregular internationalization rhythm, but does not have a significant effect on internationalization scope. Second, with the expansion of negative performance gaps (gap), the positive effect of foreign shareholding on internationalization pace and the irregular internationalization rhythm will strengthen. Third, as negative forecast gaps extend, the positive effect of foreign shareholding on internationalization pace and the irregular internationalization rhythm will weaken.

Key words: foreign shareholding, negative performance gaps, negative forecast gaps, internationalization process