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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
SOEs matter
    2016-07-18  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    IF a massive movement of emancipation of the mind was called for to recognize and promote the role of private capital and entrepreneurship in China three decades ago, another mental emancipation movement is required to back healthy development in State-owned enterprises (SOEs) today. The sound and healthy development of POEs (privately owned enterprises) and SOEs neck in neck, on a legal, fair and open basis, is in the best interest of China.

    At a recent meeting, President Xi Jinping said that all concerned parties should be “rightly confident” to make SOEs larger, stronger and better by continuously enhancing their vitality and influence and strengthening their ability against risk, and retain and appreciate the State asset value.

    Behind the central leadership’s repeated commitment to the strengthening of SOEs’ development is the heated controversy over the role and prospects of SOEs in recent years.

    Quite a few pundits and officials have been calling for downsizing SOEs, and some have gone even further to propose SOEs’ complete withdrawal from the marketplace because they see SOEs as a burden on economic development.

    They claim that SOEs have innate problems such as low efficiency, corruption, bureaucracy, nepotism and overstaffing. They also insist that SOEs’ dominance in the country’s economy leads to the huge misallocation of resources and unfair competition between SOEs and POEs, constituting a major obstacle to China’s further economic development.

    Such accusations sound plausible given the fact that in the past few SOEs worldwide had good records in long-term operations. Those in the former Soviet Union and other socialist countries were all but a complete failure. China also saw a period of time when SOEs suffered myriad problems.

    

    Hard facts, however, have proved that it is as much a dogmatic and mistaken idea to think that SOEs are hopeless as it was to think that market economy was irreconcilable with socialist countries that prevailed 30 years ago.

    China’s historic achievements in the past decades have demonstrated an eternal truth: change is the only constant. Seeking the truth from facts and practicing reforms based on current and local conditions are absolutely necessary for a nation’s progress and growth.

    Maladies such as corruption and low efficiency are definitely not merely diseases of SOEs. I possessed this bias 20 years ago, until I joined a couple of POEs. While I worked in a five-star hotel and a large shoe factory both owned and run by Hong Kong companies, I found that there were as many loopholes in managing those businesses as in the SOEs where I had worked before.

    In my experience, taking kickbacks and stealing company property prevailed and nepotism was even worse in the POEs.

    A plain fact is that without constant reform and restructuring, any company, whether they be SOEs or POEs, will stall, decline and die, however powerful they may have once been. Just name a few one-time legends: Kodak, Nokia, Motorola, Panasonic and Toshiba.

    Therefore, this narrow point of view against SOEs doesn’t fit in the fast-changing Chinese society, and we must think out of the box.

    As a socialist country, SOEs serve as the pillar of the national economy and their development concerns China’s economic quality and development level, people’s well-being and national security.

    SOEs play an irreplaceable role in the construction and operation of infrastructure and other strategic industries. Decades of experiences in these areas have made Chinese SOEs the world’s most competitive contractors in building the best high-speed railways, highways, harbors and nuclear plants. Engineering wonders of their making can be seen around the world!

    The flourishing of POEs like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and Huawei is a strong rebuttal of the claim that SOEs are strangling POEs. The existence of diversified forms of economic ownership is one of China’s sharpest competitive edges, so why should we give it up?

    As long as we stick to reform and innovation, we will be able to overcome problems confronting SOEs and rejuvenate them.

    (The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.)

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