Drawing upon the organization learning theory and social capital perspective, we aim to examine the influences of subsidiary top manager’s relational characteristics on subsidiary knowledge acquisition and performance. Using survey data from Korean firms in China, we demonstrate that both parentsubsidiary managerial trust and communication help subsidiary’s knowledge acquisition from the headquarters. In addition, subsidiary and local firm’s managerial trust is positively related to local business knowledge acquisition, while political networking with local government officials increases the amount of local institutional knowledge that the subsidiary acquires. Besides, we also find out that the positive relationship between the parents’ knowledge and subsidiary performance is moderated by local institutional knowledge, whereas moderating effect of parents’ knowledge and local business knowledge is negatively related to subsidiary performance.