Vice-Premier on State Enterprise Reform

The situation in the current state enterprise reform and development is generally good, and the goal of the three-year reform and the program for solving the difficulties in the state sector has been basically reached.

Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo made this remark Wednesday at a workshop on the re-organizing of the Shanghai-based Baoshan Steel and Iron Group, one of the largest steel complexes in China.

In his speech, the vice-premier called for a complete and precise understanding and serious implementation of the central leadership's policies on state enterprise reform. "We should be confident about the revival of state enterprises," he said.

Experience shows that the policies and principles adopted by the central leadership are completely correct: state firms can be reinvigorated; public ownership and the market economy are effectively combinable; and the state economy has broad prospects in the socialist market economy, the vice premier stressed.

Wu criticized some wrongdoings with regard to the state enterprise reform, such as simply "withdrawing all state enterprises from competitive fields" or giving state property to collectives or individuals gratis. All these wrongdoings must be corrected, he said.

He made three proposals, as follows:

-- We must speed up the development of major state firms and enterprise groups so as to let them play a leading part in the

national economy;

-- We must improve the state sector as a whole through strategic readjustments and optimizing its layout; and

-- We must strengthen the controling, influencing and driving roles of the state sector by developing the joint-stock system.

China will further encourage state enterprises to become joint-

stock companies through going public, setting up joint ventures

with foreign partners and holding each others' stocks, so as to

develop a mixed-ownership economy, the official said.

Meanwhile, he stressed, the state must control the stake of strategic enterprises in order to let the state sector play a leading part in the national economy.






People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/