With the gradual deepening of the reform and opening up of the Chinese economy, multinational enterprises are becoming the mainstay of the Chinese capital undertaking foreign direct investment, and their overseas employment relations and trade union practices are gradually attracting the attention of international scholars. In explaining the employment relations practices of Chinese multinational enterprises, an "original sin doctrine" has been widely seen in literature, which is derived from either the "path dependence" view or the "China exceptionalism" view. This doctrine holds that the place of origin of the Chinese overseas capital results in an idiosyncratic model of management with a certain set of employment and trade union practices. Drawing on a stakeholder-based industrial relations perspective, the authors conducted a matched-case comparison between the unionization efforts of a German Volkswagen Group's plant and a China Fuyao Group's factory in the United States, revealing the limitations of the "original sin doctrine" which highlights the role of capital's place of origin. The authors concluded that the local institutional context of the host country and the complex interaction among multiple stakeholders have an important impact over the overseas trade union practices of multinational enterprises.