abstract This research used 1,329 Chinese publicly listed companies’ data from 1998 to 2009 to investigate how IFRS, state ownership, and board of directors (BOD) influence earnings management. We conclude that stateownership to an extent discourages earnings management in the current environment of China. However, IFRS implementation does not seem to deter earnings management. When state-ownership is not the case, increasing the number of independent BOD seems to be a good practice to discourage earnings management, although non-independent BOD does not make any difference.