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Powerful forces within China’s political system seek to thwart urgently needed reforms to the country’s state-owned enterprises, with both key figures in government corporations and Communist diehards opposing the further introduction of free market measures.
On the eve of China’s decennial leadership transition which is set to usher in a new generation of top policy-makers, Caixin reports that reforms to China’s state-owned corporations face major roadblocks from a pair of highly disparate yet equally prominent groups within the country’s nexus of power.
On the one side are the leading figures in China’s state-owned enterprises, who have a vested interest in perpetuating a system which confers their corporate fiefdoms with preferential access to bank capital, and has enabled them to maintain a monopoly over many key sectors of the economy such as energy and steel production.
On the other side are Communist diehards opposed to the introduction of any free market measures to China’s economy, and who consider the privatization of state-owned concerns to be a heterodox deviation from the incumbent government’s Marxist origins.
Despite the disparate origins and motives of these two political groups, they together comprise a formidable coalition for thwarting much-needed reforms of the country’s state-owned enterprise system.
