The participation of the CPC’s Party organization in corporate governance is an institutional arrangement of corporate governance with Chinese characteristics. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, in order to continue to strengthen the construction of the CPC’s grass-roots Party organizations, government departments have issued a series of documents and administrative regulations to promote “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” of wholly state-owned companies and state-holding companies. By specifying in the articles of association the important matters of Party building work such as the responsibilities and authorities, institutional settings, operating mechanism and basic guarantee of the Party organization, the legitimacy of the Party organization’s participation in corporate governance is guaranteed, which has a significant impact on the production and operation and economic decision-making of firms, and promotes firms to actively respond to national policies.

Based on the participation information of rural revitalization disclosed by A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2020, this paper manually collects the data of “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” of listed firms, and adopts the PSM-DID method to empirically test the impact of “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” on firm participation in rural revitalization. The results show that: (1) “The CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” enhances the degree of implementing the national strategy of rural revitalization, and promotes firms to choose the way of industrial revitalization. (2) Further analysis also finds that firms with “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” also have a higher willingness to participate in the follow-up rural revitalization, and will continue to participate in rural revitalization. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” on firm participation in rural revitalization is more significant when firms are private and close to national poverty-stricken counties. (4) The channel test shows that “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” can improve the proportion of the Party committee members serving on the board of directors, make the Party secretary and chairman more likely to be held by one person, and promote the integration of the Party building and operating management.

This paper studies the mechanism and economic consequences of the innovative institutional arrangement of “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” earlier, which helps to better clarify and understand how “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association” ensures the effective exertion of the Party organization’s decision-making, execution and supervision functions in firm practice, thus affecting the production and operation and major decisions of firms, and also promotes the relevant research on the driving mechanism of firms to fulfill the social responsibility of rural revitalization. The conclusions lay a certain theoretical foundation for improving the corporate governance structure, strengthening the construction of grassroots Party organizations and continuing the work of “the CPC’s Party Building into Articles of Association”, and also have important policy implications for how to promote firms to “realize the effective connection between consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization” in the post poverty-alleviation era.