Political and Economic Analysis of State-Owned Enterprise Reform

In revisiting the forty year history of reforms to China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE), the book assesses the experiences of this process of reform and scrutinizes how this has helped advance the country’s economy overall.
The author finds that China’s SOE reform not only commits to institutional innovation within the corporation in terms of operating mechanisms, management structure, legal organization and the economic system of the enterprise; but that it is also underpinned by a series of policies that highlight an increasing market orientation. The measures have given rise to a benign interaction between enterprise reform and market development, while switching the SOE’s role from appendages of government organs under a planned economic system to more autonomous entities that integrate public ownership and the market economy. In this regard, SOE reform’s success in constructing a modern enterprise system serves as the micro-foundation and core of an improved socialist market economic system.
The book will appeal to academics and students interested in political economy and the Chinese economy, with particular reference to SOE reform and the recent economic transition in China.

Huiming Zhang is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Fudan University. He specialises in political economy and Chinese economy.