Presently, a peak of intergenerational succession has already begun in Chinese family businesses. Internationalization is a key strategy for family firms to achieve long-term competitiveness and sustainable growth. Previous literatures on the impact of intergenerational succession on family firm internationalization largely examine the effects of family next generation involvement in power on the internationalization of family firm, and ignore the influence of second generation succession patterns on the internationalization of family firms. On the basis of dividing second generation succession patterns into the evolutionary succession pattern and revolutionary succession pattern in Chinese family businesses, the authors make the initial effort to empirically examine the effect of second generation succession patterns on family firm internationalization, and explore the moderating effects of intergenerational authority, founder' political identity and successor' age in the above relationship. Furthermore, they explore the masking effect of internationalization commitment in the above relationship, so as to reveal the mechanism and context of second generation succession patterns on family firm internationalization. Drawing on the survey data of 253 family firms in the eastern and western provinces or municipalities (e.g., Chongqing, Zhejiang,) from 8 to 10 month in 2020, they find that:first, compared to the revolutionary succession pattern, family firms that adopt the evolutionary succession pattern are more likely to choose deep, extensive and rapid access to international market; second, intergenerational authority, founder' political identity and successor' age significantly weakens the positive effects of the evolutionary succession pattern on internationalization depth, breadth and speed in family firms, that is, the positive effects of the evolutionary succession pattern on internationalization depth, breadth and speed become less obvious in family firms with higher intergenerational authority, founder' political identity and older successors. The authors employ an alternative definition for family business, as well as select samples of family firms that are going or had already gone through intergenerational succession for robustness test, the above-mentioned results are still valid. Expand research shows that internationalization commitment plays a masking effect on the relationship between the evolutionary succession pattern and both internationalization depth and breadth, that is, the evolutionary succession pattern weakens its positive effects on both internationalization depth and breadth by reducing the level of international commitment in family firms. Based on the above research results, the following recommendations are put forward. Firstly, founders in family firms should make succession plans in advance, and arrange the evolutionary succession for the second generation as far as possible. In the process of evolutionary succession, founders should help the second successors to establish authority legitimacy as soon as possible to reduce the authority difference between the two generations. Secondly, founders in family firms should rationally understand the positive and negative effects of political relations, and actively build a friendly and clean relationship between government and business. Government departments should strive to build a more just, fair and transparent business environment, so as to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of family entrepreneurs in business activities.