State-owned enterprises must not screw up capital management reform
ANBOUND
Recently, a central enterprise capital investment fund worth 150 billion yuan was founded in Beijing and the SASAC proposed the establishment of a central enterprise innovation and development fund system consisting of three levels, namely, an investment guidance fund, an industrial development fund, and an enterprise innovation fund. However, we think that going ahead with this framework will mean that the future of capital management reform will entail state-owned enterprises reforming themselves—the funds were set up with capital from the state-owned enterprises that currently have a monopoly over the market, so why would they ever make any reforms and challenge their own position? Objectively speaking, the capital management reform being promoted by the SASAC is of a rather small scale and it does not compare in either size or breadth to any large-scale reform in the Chinese market. Therefore, there needs to be a change of perspective on this issue, otherwise this crucial effort of capital management reform could be easily screwed up.