Abstract: The impact of corporate performance pressure on earnings management is examined Based on the sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from the year 2010 to 2016, it is found that there is a significantly positive correlation between corporate performance pressure and earnings management The larger deviation from targets are, the stronger incentives for earnings management companies will have Companies with unfinished targets, which have positive performance pressure, tend to use positive earnings management, such as increasing profits, to manipulate inflated performance levels Companies that have negative performance pressure for over-achieving goals may use negative profit management practices, such as profit reduction, to hide performance results due to ratcheting considerations Compared with capital market performance pressure and historical growth pressure, the performance pressure of internal target completion has more significant relationship with earnings management Faced with different levels of performance pressure, companies will adopt different earnings management operations: when faced with performance pressure of internal target completion, they tend to use accrued earnings management; in the face of capital market performance pressure and historical growth pressure, enterprises are more inclined to using real earnings management to evade corporate governance and supervisory control

Key words: performance pressure, accrued earnings management, real earnings management