山西省高新技术产业化项目和企业认定办法

上一篇: 大连市无规定动物疫病区建设管理条例
下一篇: 中国银监会办公厅关于银行业金融机构开办外汇保证金交易有关问题的通知

The SOE reform in China
Zhou Dayong
Summer semester 2003
Europa-University Viadrina,Germany

Abstract:
The essay tries to study the process of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in China. Chinese economic reform resulted in significant influences on all social aspects, SOEs as an especially economic sector suffers a change both in internal management as well in the outside economic environment. I try to discuss in the essay, that the Chinese SOE reform has made large progress, however, SOE can’t conquer many problems by itself, the resolution of SOE lies in elimination of SOE by a further reform including property transition and construction of a fairer market.


Outline
1. History of the SOE reform in China
2. The main problems left in the reform
3. The reasons of SOE problem behind
4. Argue of some reform plans and suggestion
5. Conclusion


1. The history of the SOEs reform in China
1.1 the establishment of SOE
In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came into power in Mainland China. One goal of the CCP was to lead China into a modern socialism society. In economic scale, it meant mainly industrialization. According to CCP’s policy, the form of industrial organization must be based upon state owned enterprises. The state-owned industrial system was set up by two ways. One was the new enterprise after the liberation. At the end WWII, most industrial sectors in China, such as communication network, transportation and power industry were destroyed and had to be rebuilt, at the same time, military industries and financial sector e.g. banking system was directly nationalized from the former control of Gongmin Party. Another way was transformation from the private ownership to state-owned enterprises. The private properties were regulated under state management, in some cases, for instance in commercial scale, the former private enterprises were bought by local government gradually. Till 1952, about 83% of industrial companies were controlled by the state; a socialism economic system was announced established. (Fig 1)
1.2 The reform began from 1978
Until Chinese economic reform began in 1978, public ownership in forms of state-owned and collectivized were only legal ownership of property. In industrial sector, the enterprises were controlled respectively under central or local governments, the latter made decisions for the enterprises, the enterprises were not profit seeking economic entities, they were simply workshops to execute centrally set policies.
In 1970s, the discontent of economic situation accumulated constantly, because the defects of central planning system became obviously more and more. Around 1978, the rural reform took place from grass roots and spread quickly, till 1982, the collectivized people commune had to be abolished. In company with the reform, the free market in a certain degree was developed. At the same time, the problem of lack of autonomy in SOE, which led to low efficiency, was also taken into account. Therefore, from 1978 on, the Communist Party, under the leading of Deng Xiaoping, put hand to solve the SOE problem. From 1978 to 1984, the efforts of the reform concentrated on giving the SOEs more autonomy by allowing them increased authority over the allocation of their profits, and limited production autonomy. The rest profits could be used either to finance increased investments or to pay bonuses to employees. Besides, administrative control over SOEs was decentralized to local governments. But as the prices were still centrally determined and SOEs did not realize the cost of their fixed and working capital, the reforms did not improve much the resource allocation or the utilization of capital. (1)

1.3 Contract is the main form in the second phase.
From 1985 to 1992 was the second phase of the SOE reform. The policy named Zhenqi Fenkai (separating government from enterprises), the central government decided to turn SOEs into truly independent production and management entities, and stipulate that enterprises must take responsibilities for their own profits and losses by means of contracts and leasing. The common practice was: the enterprises sign a manage contract with the responsible authorities. Under the contract, enterprises were not only allowed to retain the extra profits after they had fulfilled the contracted quotas, but also allowed to arrange their own manage including dismiss or enroll personnel. By the end of 1987, about 80% of state-owned industrial enterprises adopted the contracts system. In 1991, over 90% of the previously contracted enterprises signed the second round of contracts. Meanwhile, based on the first round contract practice, the content of the contract was improved; the authority introduced more rational norms to examine the fulfillment of contract. A multiple index system was formed, which included economic efficiency index, development potentiality index and management index etc.
During this period, the practice of shareholding reform appeared as well. This new creature was adopted at first by village enterprises, which come from the former collective enterprises. The village enterprises were always short of capital, so they raised money from the village residents. Along with the reform moved forward from countryside to cities, the shareholding system was also introduced into SOE reform. Early in April 1984 Chinese reform committee organized a seminar to discuss the exploitation of shareholding in SOE reform. That conference drew a conclusion that shareholding system is a rational way to restructure the collective and state owned enterprises in cities. In July the same year, the first shareholding company after Chinese liberation—Beijing Tianqiao department store (shareholding) came onto horizon. Till 1991, there were already 709 state owned enterprises restructured along shareholding system. These enterprises included industrial sector companies, trade companies, also financial enterprises, construction enterprises etc.
Besides, in the second phase of SOE reform, tax system had also a great change. Instead of handing in profit, SOEs paid a certain portion of tax according to their revenue level. The State and local government collected tax separately; this measure was implemented to loose the relation between SOE and local authority.
However, during this period, the SOEs showed their weakness in competition with the new developed private companies, joint venture companies and township and village enterprises, because at one side, the manager of SOEs didn’t get use to do business in a free market, the attitude of waiting, relying on government and begging for help were widespread. At another side, the relationship between government and enterprises became more complicated, because, although under the contract system, the government have no right to interfere in the SOEs management, they still rely on each other: the government need the SOE to have good performance in order to settle surplus labor forces and continue to play a role in maintain the social stability, at the same time, to increase the government’s revenue to deal with the raising infrastructure investment and other expense. The SOE, on the other side, need the protection of the authority, in order to obtain more chance to get loans, subsidizes or orders in government arranged projects. Besides, even though most of direct subsidies form the state have been cancelled, many domestic savings were also channeled into SOEs, because banks had been directed to take up the role of making "loans" to SOEs instead of the state. The total of non-performing loans has grown so large that it started to endanger the banking system. (2)

1.4 The MES is the key point in the third phase of the reform and the achievements
Form 1993 on, the reform moved into the third phase, the aim called setting up the modern enterprises system (MES). The Third Plenary Session of the 14th Party Central Committee in November 1993 proposed: "It is the inevitable request for market economy to set up modern enterprise system, it is a direction of the SOE reform of China. "This indicates that SOE reform enters a new stage of system innovation. In 1994 the State Council determined to chose 100 state-run large and medium-sized enterprises to launch an experiment to implement restructure along MES. The basic demands of the experiment were to "define right and responsibility clearly, separate government function from enterprise management, and operate scientifically”. Those requirements were in fact the basic characters concerning modern enterprises system. Along the policy of building MES system, and based upon the development of the whole economy, there were many achievements reached in the third phase.
1) By 2000, most large and middle scale SOEs have set up modern enterprise system tentatively. According to the investigation in 2473 enterprises of State Statistics Bureau 2000, 2016 enterprises have restructured, account 81.5%. Among those enterprises, 603 turned to Co., Ltd., accounts for 29.9%; 713 were restructured to limited companies, accounts for 35.4%; the number of solely state-owned company is 700, accounts for 34.7%. As for their management, 82.2% established shareholders’ meeting, 95.1% established the board of directors, and the board of supervisors has been established in 84.5% of enterprises. Therefore, corporate governance structure has already taken shape in SOEs.
2) In this phase, during" the Ninth Five-Year Plan", China began to adjust the state-run economic layout strategically, The idea called Zhuada Fangxiao (to grab the big ones and let the small ones go). The reform for medium and large SOEs focused on fostering a batch of trans-regional, inter-trade, inter-ownership big SOE groups through reorganizing, transforming, uniting annex. In 1997, the number of national large-scale enterprise groups expands to 120. For instance, under approval by the State Council, China Petrochemical Corporation, China Oil and Natural Gas Corporation were predominated to two large groups, whose assets of enterprise group reached in 40 billion dollars, such measure improved the intensification degree and international competitiveness of Chinese petrochemical industry greatly. Another example was in telecommunication market, six major SOE telecom groups (China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China satellite communication, China railway communication) were predominated. So a new form of competition in field of communication service took shape.
By the end of 2001, national key enterprises add up to 2710, total assets up to 1,280,450 million dollar. Among 179 super-huge enterprise groups, whose business income is over 500 million dollar, there are 165 state-owned or state-holding enterprise groups.
3) During this phase, separating government function from enterprise management was strengthened harder than before. Chinese government started administrative organization structure reform in 1998. Through this administrative restructure, the departments of the State Council reduced from 40 to 29. At provincial level, government departments reduced from 55 on average to 40, about 20% departments were simply. Some departments were cancelled totally. The cancellation of government departments indicated that the SOE stay in the charge of specialized official department manages changed completely. Meanwhile, the administration rank of the state-owned enterprise were cancelled, some administrative approval procedure were simplified.
4) To relieve the social burden of SOEs, re-employment service center were set up to shunt the redundant staff of enterprises. It has been a great difficult problem of the SOE reform from begin on that enterprises are overstaffed. It is an important measure of revitalizing the SOEs to dismiss and distribute workers. In June 1998, the state council required all regions to set up re-employment service center system. National Ministry of Labor and Social Security emphasized that the laid-off worker in SOEs must 100% enter the re-employment service center. The re-employment service center determined to provide serve functions such as grant basic living cost, withhold social insurance, organize job training and launch employment etc. for laid-off worker. The fund, which used for ensuring laid-off worker's basic life and paying the social insurance premium, come from financial budget, enterprise as well as societies (namely form contribution or from laid-off worker themselves), each part bears 1/3 of the whole fund. The re-employment service center provides service for laid-off workers for at longest 3 years. When they can’t reemploy after this period, can still enjoy unemployment compensation or the society relieve according to relevant regulation.
In this reform stage, re-employment service center played a positive role on maintain social stability. From 1998 to the end of 2001, 25,500,000 laid-off workers emerged (Fig 3) in national state-owned enterprises, among them more than 17 million people were reemployed, more than 3 million people retired. However, re-employment service center was only a transitional institute, because the SOE had to still take responsibility to settle down those laid off workers. According to a new policy, all laid-off workers after 2001 are treat as unemployed and have to enter free labor force market.
5) In order to extricate SOE from predicament, especially to resolve the problem of high liability-asset ratio, by December 2000, 580 SOEs began to implement debt-to-share swap, that mean the enterprises’ debt were recalculated as share (enterprises’ equity), so that the interest burden of SOEs were lightened. In the process, most of unperformed loans would be calculated as shares, which would be gathered and supervised by a new state commission-- State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Till 2001, the total amount of money of debt-to-equity swap account 40,5 billion dollars, and the result was that the average asset-liability ratio of debt-to-share swapped enterprises dropped from more than 70% to under 50%.

2. The main problems left in the reform
After three steps reform, the SOE acquired more autonomy, as we have seen, the whole economic circumstance were also better. But because the reform did not touch the socialism idea from begin on, thus the transition of ownership of SOE was left basically unchanged, the defects of SOE could not changed completely. In the context of China’s economic reforms, there are still a few problems in SOE sector existed and have also a deep influence.
First of all, the interventions from the government still maintained influence in SOE. The administrative relation between enterprise and government is still remaining. Even the Local State Assets management office was established, it belong to the same bureaucratic system like former authorities. It can appoint or remove senior executives of SOEs. If enterprise applies to the broad structure, the directors in broad are appointed by it. The office has also a say in the transfer of holdings, corporate mergers, closures or other major changes to the enterprises, it is also charged with the tasks of clarifying property rights and settling disputes (3) . It seemed that the state assets supervisory takes the place of former authority above the SOEs. Moreover, the local government maintains still strong power in local enterprise, they rely on each other as we discussed above. So long as the enterprises are state-owned, whether they are big groups, stock companies or little entities, it is difficult to shaking off the directly or indirectly control from the government.
Secondly, because of the long tradition, enterprises are still taking responsibilities for their employees in pension, medical areas, therefore the so-called “soft budget constraint” cannot be given up completely. Although we have discussed that the Chinese government has managed to start re-employment plan, SOEs also take a part of the fund to support the plan. Correspondenly, government had to shoulder some failures resulted from the mismanagement of SOEs’ and avoid from their bankruptcy, in order to prevent the enterprise from bankrupcy and thus endanger the social stability.
Thirdly, the management of SOEs has low quality compare with other economic sectors. Though SOEs have produced an average 10% growth rate in the value of industrial output during the period 1978-98, this rate is considerably below the average of other sectors. The problem has two reasons. One of them is lacking of the inner incentive of the managers. The SOE managers are not entrepreneurs in the true sense, but bureaucrats at any rate. Their appointment by the government not basically according to their managerial capability, but based on their rankings in the bureaucratic hierarchy through the politic system. Another factor concerns the supervision within the SOE, it is also lacking in most cases. In practice, the position of supervisor in a enterprise is normally taken by staff within the enterprise and in most cases, the position of president of the supervision committee is taken by somebody within the enterprise, who is under the leadership of the directors and managers in his ranks both at work and in the Party. This system makes it very hard for the supervision committee to fully perform its authority (4) .
Fourth, the high liability-asset ratio is also regarded as a fatal problem of SOEs. It was observed, that during the reform period, the liability-asset ratio of industrial SOEs rose from around 11% in 1978 to approximately 65% in 1997. In as many as one-fourth of industrial SOEs, liabilities have even come to exceed assets; these enterprises are in fact insolvent. The World Bank suggests that in debt restructuring may be necessary for the most heavily indebted enterprises to bankrupt. After the implement of debt-to-share swap, the ratio decreased, but the debtor, in most cases are banks, didn’t collect the loan back, so it made the SOE even harder to get new loan for production. (5)
Furthermore, the whole process of the SOE reform companied by a serials of social problems, in compare to some difficulties such as lack or reserve labor force, ageing of the equipments, the most troublesome is the unemployment in large scales. In addition, in rural areas, millions of flowing population has been produced because of the bankruptcy and low profitability of the township and village enterprise. In urban China there are frequent reports about workers’ unrest. Although until now China still maintain a relative political stability, the menace will not fade away in a short time.

公安部 国家经贸委


国有企业治安保卫工作暂行规定
1997年10月5日，公安部、国家经济贸易委员会

第一条 为了适应建立现代企业制度的要求，改进和加强国有企业的治安保卫工作，为企业改革和发展提供安全保障，根据国家有关法律、法规，制定本规定。
第二条 本规定所称国有企业包括国家绝对控股的股份有限公司和有限责任公司。
第三条 国有企业治安保卫工作是企业管理的重要组成部分，由国有企业依照国家有关法律、法规自主实施，采取“因地制宜，自主管理，积极防范，保障安全”的方针。
第四条 国有企业治安保卫工作的任务是建立健全治安保卫工作制度，落实治安防范措施，预防和减少违法犯罪，消除治安灾害隐患，保护国有资产和职工人身安全，维护企业正常的生产经营秩序。
第五条 国有企业的治安保卫工作由本单位法定代表人负责，法定代表人可以委托企业其他负责人具体分管企业治安保卫工作。
第六条 国有企业治安保卫工作的主要职责是：
（一）贯彻执行国家有关治安保卫工作的法律、法规；
（二）开展社会主义法制和治安保卫工作的宣传教育，增强职工群众的法制观念和自觉维护本企业治安秩序的意识；
（三）制定和组织落实应由企业承担的各项治安保卫工作制度；
（四）根据需要选配保卫人员，为治安保卫工作提供必要的经费和物质保障；
（五）落实防火、防盗抢、防爆炸、防破坏和防诈骗、防窃密等治安防范措施；
（六）预防和制止违法犯罪行为，维护企业稳定；
（七）及时向公安机关报告发生在企业的刑事案件、治安案件、治安灾害事故并保护现场；
（八）调解、疏导企业内部纠纷，协助公安机关查处发生在企业的刑事案件和治安案件；
（九）帮助、教育本企业有轻微违法犯罪行为的人员；
（十）协助公安机关监督、考察、教育本企业被判处管制、剥夺政治权利、宣告缓刑、假释、监外执行和依法保外就医的犯罪分子，以及被监视居住、取保候审的犯罪嫌疑人和劳动教养所外执行人员；
（十一）协助公安机关管理本企业的暂住人口和其他外来人口；
（十二）参与所在地区组织的社会治安综合治理工作；
（十三）国家法律、法规规定的其他治安保卫任务。
第七条 国有企业可以根据需要，按照精干高效、运转灵活的原则设立保卫机构，或者选择其他适合本企业情况的保卫工作形式。
第八条 国有企业保卫机构是企业职能部门，其主要任务是具体负责本企业各项保卫工作并配合公安机关打击侵害企业的刑事犯罪活动，维护企业治安秩序。
第九条 年满十八周岁的中华人民共和国公民，身体健康，品行良好，具有高中以上文化程度，志愿从事保卫工作，其中，重要岗位保卫人员须按公安机关制订的保卫人员上岗标准，经过培训，取得上岗合格证书，方可从事保卫工作。有违法犯罪记录的人员不得从事保卫工作。
第十条 国有企业保卫人员实行竞争选聘，择优录用。担任企业保卫机构负责人的，除具备第九条所列条件外，还应当懂得国家有关法律、法规，具有保卫工作的专业知识，熟悉本企业的生产经营业务。
保卫机构负责人的任免应当及时报当地公安机关备案。
第十一条 国有企业保卫工作应以易发案和要害部位为重点，采取定时巡逻与固定目标守卫相结合的方式，要保证24小时有人值班巡逻。保卫管理人员要直接参与生产现场管理和防范。
第十二条 国有企业应当按照公安机关的规定和技术标准，在要害部位设置安全技术防范设施。
第十三条 国有企业重要部门或者重要岗位，不得录用和接受有犯罪记录的人员。
第十四条 公安机关依照国家有关法律、法规对国有企业的治安保卫工作实施监督和指导，主要职责是：
（一）依法监督企业贯彻执行国家有关治安保卫工作的法律、法规和规章；
（二）检查企业治安保卫工作制度和措施的落实情况，对发现的治安安全隐患提出整改意见并指导企业消除治安安全隐患；
（三）监督、指导企业自行组建的保安机构的工作；
（四）指导协助企业培训保卫人员；
（五）指导企业制定处置各种突发事件的预案，并组织必要的演练；
（六）适时向企业通报社会治安情况，督促企业有针对性地实施防范措施；
（七）总结和推广企业保卫工作先进经验；
（八）应当由公安机关履行的其他监督、指导职责。
第十五条 对侵害企业财产和职工人身安全的违法犯罪案件，公安机关应当及时查处，为企业正常的生产经营活动创造良好的外部治安环境。
第十六条 对执行本规定成绩突出的单位和个人，由公安机关、企业或者其上级主管部门予以表彰或者奖励。
第十七条 对违反本规定，忽视企业治安保卫工作的有关责任人员，由企业或者其上级主管部门予以批评教育或者行政处分。
第十八条 国家机关、社会团体、事业单位，集体所有制企业、私营企业、股份制企业以及中外合资企业、中外合作合营企业、外商独资企业的治安保卫工作，参照本规定执行。
第十九条 本规定自公布之日起施行；公安部以前制定的有关企业治安保卫工作规定与本规定不一致的，执行本规定。