Reforming China's State-owned Enterprises: From Structure to People

• Published in: The China quarterly (London) Vol. 229; no. 229; pp. 107 - 129
• Main Author: Lin, Li-Wen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.03.2017
• Subjects: Attention; Banking; Banking industry; Banks; Capital markets; Capitalism; Careers; Chief executive officers; China; Chinese languages; Chinese people; Communist parties; Executives; Managers; Ownership; Political parties; Politics; Privatization; Professionalization; Public enterprise; Recruitment; Reforms; Resource management; Supervision; Work experience; China; managerial elite; cadre management; 专业化; 国有企业; 企业集团; 干部管理; China; state-owned enterprise; 高管; business group; professionalization
• ISSN: 0305-7410; 1468-2648
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305741016001569

The Chinese Communist Party has recently unveiled its new agenda for state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform. Most attention to date has focused on structural reform through the so-called “mixed ownership” policy. This article is to direct attention to a critically important yet much less analysed item on the SOE reform agenda: the professionalization of the SOE executive personnel. This article provides an empirical study on the managerial elite of China's financial and non-financial SOEs. The findings suggest a politically constrained management approach in the Chinese state-owned sector. Moreover, an innovative analysis of the SOE executive career patterns reveals that the state-controlled banks and industrial SOEs employ divergent human resource management methods. The anatomy of the SOE managerial elite in this article provides a timely evaluation of the recent SOE reform policy and a richer understanding of China's state-owned sector from a comparative capitalism perspective. 中国共产党最近公布了其最新的国企改革议程。目前多数评论者的眼光多专注于股权结构的改革, 即所谓的混合所有制。然而, 国企领导人的专业化是一项极重要惟较少研究关注的国企改革政策。本文以实证研究的方式分析金融与非金融国企的高管背景, 其研究结果显示中国国有企业有着政治上束缚的管理方式。此外, 本文以一种创新的方式对国企高管职业经历进行分析, 其结果显示金融与非金融国企展现出不同的人力资源管理配置方式。本文对于国企高管的解构对当前的国企改革政策提供了及时的评价, 并且从比较资本主义的观点对中国国有企业有更深的了解。