中文摘要：

法律在多大程度上可以保护投资者利益是依法治国的重要课题之一。大股东对上市公司的掏空行为，不仅伤害了中小股东，更伤害了债权人利益。资金占用规模持续上升加剧了债权人与股东之间的代理冲突。为了约束大股东行为，债权人会通过引进法律这一外部治理机制解决代理冲突，通过诉讼参与公司治理，保护自身的利益。基于手工整理的中国债务诉讼数据，本文发现，大股东占用上市公司资金比例越高，越容易引起债权人诉讼，特别是在债权人对公司控制力较弱时，这一关系更加密切；上市公司被债权人起诉后，从第2年开始，资金占用情况得到抑制，表明法律诉讼在一定程度上可以约束大股东行为，影响公司内部治理，保护债权人利益。

英文摘要：

It is one of vital issues on rule of law to study the effect of law on investor protection. Tunneling of firm by large shareholder can not only cause damage to the minority shareholders, but impair thevalue of creditors. Increasing rise of other receivables in firm will intensify agency conflict between shareholder and creditors. To regulate the behavior of large shareholder, creditors will fall back on the law as outside governance that lessens the conflict between shareholder and creditors, which can protect creditor＇s rights. Based on the hand collected debt lawsuits from 1998-2007 in China, the results show that occurrence of litigation keep positive correlation with degree of tunneling via internal corporate loan, and the relationship get strongly when there are less leverage in firm. Since second year after liti- gation against firm, degree of tunnel from large shareholder get less, which verifies the effect of litigation on the creditor protection, and of the law as outside governance on controlling shareholder behavior.