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The purpose of this paper aims to explore how borrower and group‐level characteristics affect repayment decisions of group borrowers by highlighting the case of rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) in Guizhou province in Southwest China.

The Logit model was applied to test the determinants of repayment performance of RCCs' group lending. The authors used the survey data of 245 farm households in Guizhou province, collected in 2008.

The empirical results indicate that there is a serious mismatch between joint liability mechanisms and the social and economic conditions in rural China. Mechanisms such as threatening to withhold defaulters' future loans from RCCs failed to work. In addition, higher household incomes also did not improve repayment performance. However, factors such as a higher degree of acquaintanceship in a group, migrant income, and employment in government agencies, positively improved the chances of repayment.

Group lending is more suitable for poorer areas with few opportunities for migration and limited access to finance. In addition, constructing the trustworthy relationship between micro‐lenders and customers and designing diverse and flexible financial services to meet heterogeneous demands are equally important.

This paper is an attempt to empirically explore the determinants of repayment performance in group lending programs in China. The results provide meaningful policy implications for the government and rural financial institutions.

Purpose — This chapter aims to argue that in some cases, dishonesty in international partnerships may be beneficial from the dishonest firm’s perspective.Design/methodology/approach — The chapter is based on three cases of dishonest Chinese firms that cheated their American or German partners.Findings — We argue that dishonesty does not always lead to negative consequences for the dishonest/opportunistic firm and if it does, benefits may be larger than costs.Practical implications — It is not always easy to avoid partners’ dishonest behavior especially if they hope to benefit considerably from this and if the probability of getting caught and punished is low.Originality/value — The consequences of dishonesty in international partnerships — especially, relationship dissolution and positive impacts of dishonesty for the dishonest firm — have not received considerable research attention yet. We argue that despite relationship dissolution caused by the Chinese partners’ dishonesty, two of the dishonest firms gained.