The question to be answered is : "Since the 1990 opening of stock exchanges, China started to use financial statements to determine the performance of listed companies. What were company C's performance from 2002 to 2004 and the quality of reported earnings?"

Need a detailed analysis including ratio and trend analysis. The ratio chosen must obviously relate to the trends observed - I don't need a full analysis with all the ratio, just the ones you think are relevant to what you can see from the statements. The entire analysis also needs to be done in the context of the article attached.

In terms of the part of the question that ask about the quality of reported earnings, I think that it has to do with the fact that the company applied aging method for its accounts receivable throughout 2002 and 2004, but in year 2004, it set aside Rmb2,597m as a special bad debt allowance. Because there aren't any notes attached regarding their accounting policies/ definitions etc...

Q1:  Common-size balance sheet and common-size income statement

Q2:  The change of accounting policy for accounts receivable, with a focus on 2002 through 2004 Apex.

Schipper (1989) de?nes earnings management as a "purposeful intervention in the external ?nancial reporting process, with the intent of obtaining some private gain (as opposed to say, merely facilitating the neutral operation of the process)".

Earnings management can be defined as the adjustment of a firms' reported economic performance by insiders either to mislead some stakeholders or to influence contractual outcomes.