Thirty Years of Turbulence - Chinese Enterprises

作者：admin  点击次数：13  发布时间：2025-05-11

Let's talk back to Zhou Guanwu's reform. The delegation of autonomy means an adjustment of the power relationship between Shougang and the higher-level management department. Zhou Guanwu is no longer a factory director who manages 200000 people but only has the power to sign and renovate a toilet. He wants to control his own destiny. This directly involves the power adjustment between state-owned enterprise managers and asset owners, which is one of the important propositions for the transformation of Chinese enterprises. In fact, since the first day of reform, this power adjustment has been ongoing in an ambiguous and tangled situation, with the game being fiercely played within vested interest groups. Without clear property rights, it will be lingering and sustainable, without beginning or end. Shougang is just the first case.

After the implementation of autonomy, Zhou Guanwu has been trying to clarify the relationship between enterprises and the country. Firstly, he proposed the contracting system, which includes the principle of "fixing the base number, ensuring payment, retaining all excess payments, and assuming full responsibility for any arrears". These 16 words are upright and resounding, and will become the standard explanation for state-owned enterprise reform in the future. Around 1979, there was no doubt about its progressiveness, but the problems it could not solve were also so obvious. That is, in the last four words - "conceit in arrears", when the enterprise really appeared "conceit in arrears", could its system and functions really be "conceited"? This problem will not arise in an era of commodity shortage. It is like a sinister foreshadowing buried in the path of state-owned enterprise reform, silent but extremely deadly.