The last time China got serious about reforming its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was nearly two decades ago when hundreds of firms were privatized or liquidated annually under the mantra of “grasp the large and release the small”. But with the turnover in leadership to Hu Jintao in 2003, Beijing became less willing to close poor performers and relied on the newly created State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to instil a stronger commercial orientation among those not let go. SASAC, however, only served to protect their existence through cross subsidization of loss markers by the more profitable firms, who benefited from their monopoly positions in key sectors. Under pressure, Beijing has now proposed a new strategy of mixed ownership to improve SOE performance, but this will not solve the problem.
中国上一次认真推行国企(SOE)改革是在近20年前，那时，在“抓大放小”的口号下，每年有数百家国企被私有化或清盘。但在2003年胡锦涛出任最高领导人之后，中国政府变得不太愿意让国企“差生”倒闭，而是依赖新成立的国有资产监督管理委员会（SASAC，简称国资委），向那些未被放弃的国企注入更强的市场意识。然而，国资委只是起到了保护它们存在的作用——通过让受益于关键行业垄断地位、盈利能力较好的国企来补贴亏损国企。面对压力，北京方面现在提出了一项通过混合所有制提升国企业绩的新战略，但这将无法解决问题。
Profitability differences between private firms and SOEs mattered less before the global financial crisis, when return on assets was increasing steadily for both groups. But since 2008, returns for private firms have surged to 11 per cent while those for SOEs have fallen and stagnated at around 5 per cent (Figure 1). Policy makers and academics point to this widening gap as evidence of the poor performance of SOEs. Few, however, have noticed that the firms’ profit margins, another commonly used measure of profitability, have converged in recent years. Prior to the crisis, SOEs were actually more profitable than private firms (Figure 2).
全球金融危机之前，民企与国企的资产回报率都在稳步上升，两者之间的盈利能力差距不如后来那么大。但自2008年以来，民企的资产回报率已大幅升至11%，而国企资产回报率有所下降，近年徘徊于5%上下（见图1）。政策制定者和学者把这一差距的扩大视为国企业绩欠佳的证据。然而，很少有人注意到，民企和国企的利润率——另一项经常用以衡量盈利能力的指标——近年来有所接近。全球金融危机之前，国企的盈利能力实际上强于民企（见图2）。