Competition or Privatization: China’s Experience in SOE Reform

Zhibin Zhang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

INTRODUCTION

China is usually recognized in economic transition literature as a special case which achieved tremendous economic success simply through competitive market forces, without fundamental reforms in ownership system. That is, the Chinese model is generally regarded as an alternative to the privatization approach which was widely adopted in East Europe and Russia for economic and especially State Owned Enterprise (SOE) reform¹.

This paper examines the characteristics of the Chinese model and identifies the exact nature of China’s SOE reform. For this purpose, this research adopted a comprehensive literature review as methodology, with particular focus on existing empirical studies on China’s SOE reform and Share Issuance Privatization (SIP). Specifically, first, this paper will describe the process and consequences of economic and SOE reforms in China. Second, it will identify the patterns and features of China’s privatization.

ECONOMIC AND SOE REFORM IN CHINA

China officially started economic reform in December 1978. The process of economic reform or more precisely the process of SOE reform², according to its coherence to certain targets, can be divided into four phases: expanding SOE autonomy and fiscal decentralization, contract responsibility system and dual track system, corporatization and market economy, and privatization. The major events and policy initiatives since 1978 are summarized in table 1. The first part of this paper will briefly discuss the first three stages, leaving privatization to be examined separately in more detail. The first part of this paper will also review the debate on the nature of Chinese reform, including the arguments and empirical evidences presented in both schools. It then concludes with the identification of existing problems in SOEs.

Table 1: Major Events and Policy Initiatives of Economic and SOE Reforms, 1978-2004³

Expansion of SOE Autonomy and Fiscal Decentralization (1978-1983)

China started economic reform in industry⁴ with the initiatives of expanding SOE autonomy and promoting incentives, aiming at improving the operation of SOEs⁵. In 1979, SOEs were granted marginal authority and control over decisions about marketing, technical innovation, and, most importantly, the quantity and variety of output beyond mandatory planning targets. Meanwhile, SOEs were allowed to retain part of their total profit. The retained profit was required to deposit into three different funds – welfare, bonus, and investment⁶. Consequently, worker bonuses were adopted widely and rapidly in SOEs as a major component of employee compensation to boost incentives.

Besides granting SOEs autonomous authority and control over operation, the Chinese government decentralized its fiscal system as well. In 1980, a revenue sharing system was established for the central and local governments to ‘eat at separate kitchens,’ encouraging local governments to develop their own revenues⁷.

Contract Responsibility System and Dual Track System (1984-1991)

The second phase of economic reform witnessed further expansions of SOE autonomy and the introduction of a dual track (plan and market) system with an attempt to strengthen the responses of SOEs to market forces. Dating from 1984, the contract responsibility system was implemented to supplant plan targets and to promote additional enterprise autonomy. Under this system, SOE managers or the entire work force signed a contract with the supervising government to fulfill specific total profit targets, long-term profit remittances, productivity increases, in return for extensive control over enterprise operations, including production plan inside the enterprise, substantial retention of excess profit, and wage distribution⁸. The contract responsibility system then spread through other areas of economic reforms.

In the beginning of economic reform, SOEs were allowed to transact marginal supplies and commodities outside the plan at market prices which responded increasingly to the forces of demand and supply, with the persistence of compulsory deliveries at state fixed prices in the planning sectors. A dual track system of plan and market, namely the coexistence of commending plan and market channel for resource allocation and goods pricing, emerged, evolving into a most striking feature of the Chinese approach to reform⁹. This Chinese characteristic then pervaded every aspect of economic reform, including sectoral reform, regional development, price decontrol, labor market development, foreign trade promotion, central-local fiscal arrangement, and even ownership reform¹⁰.

Corporatization and Market Economy (1992-1996)

Due to political turmoil in 1989, Chinese reform retrenched till 1992 when Deng Xiaoping renewed the reform momentum. In October 1992, the 14^th Communist Party Congress proclaimed that the ultimate objective of economic reform was a “socialist market economy”. The year of 1992 marked an irreversible turn for China toward a market economy.

At the apogee of marketization, problems in SOEs persisted, leading to a widely accepted recognition that the root of the poor performance of SOEs could not be just from the lack of market mechanisms. Ownership transformation, however, was politically and ideologically constrained as a solution. Instead, China put its stakes in a Modern Enterprise System (MES), attempting to commercialize SOEs into modern corporations through introducing the private corporate governance practices. The establishment of two stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 1990 and 1991, respectively, created the preconditions for the Modern Enterprise System. Corporatization was fully underway after the Company Law came into effect in 1994.

An Alternative to Privatization?

Chinese reform achieved astonishing performance as shown in figure 1¹¹ in terms of the growth of industrial output, GDP, GDP per capita, and exports. It is very clear that in the first three phases the Chinese model of reform is totally based on a central assumption that the problems of SOEs can be addressed sufficiently by market forces, significant privatization is unnecessary. All reform measures are designed and implemented around a central target of establishing a competitive market, leaving the ownership structure basically unchanged. The existing evaluations of this model, however, are inconclusive and controversial. The review of these evaluations is organized into two parts as follows: the first part discusses different interpretations to the nature of Chinese reform and the second part examines the empirical evidences presented by different schools.

Data Source: Constructed by the author based on China Statistical Yearbook 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002.

The Nature of Chinese Reform

Sachs and Woo¹² identify two schools of thought in interpreting China’s successful economic performance and the nature of Chinese reform. One school, labeled by Sachs and Woo as ‘experimentalist school,’ attributes the economic success to the evolutionary, experimental, and incremental nature of Chinese reform. The other school, the ‘convergence school,’ holds that China’s successes are derived from the convergence of its institutions with those of existing market economies. Correspondingly, the experimentalist school believes that to sustain success China must continue the distinctive innovations and exceptional strategies. While the convergence school holds that the gradualist nature of Chinese reform is not innovation at all. It simply reflects the lack of a comprehensive and coherent reform blueprint in advance. China’s future depends on how fast and how well its institutions are harmonized with normal market economies. Privatization, therefore, will be inevitable with the progress of harmonization. Specifically, as one of the proponents of the experimentalist school, Naughton¹³ argues that the Chinese approach illustrates the feasibility of gradual reform. It shows that SOE performance can be improved through incentive mechanisms and competitive markets in the context of a state-run economy. Jefferson and Rawski¹⁴ argue that the expanded autonomy, reconfigured incentive, and dual track system created a competitive market structure, which induced SOEs to behave like private firms and resulted in rapid economic growth and a significant increase in productivity, demonstrating the viability of gradualism and experimentalism of the Chinese model. Focusing on large SOEs in China, Nolan and Wang ¹⁵ argue that, contrary to the ‘transition orthodoxy,’ large Chinese SOEs have grown and modernized rapidly, showing the possibility to reconstruct industrial institutions without privatization. McMillan¹⁶ attributes China’s economic success to the ‘nonconformist’ nature of Chinese reform, namely the massive entry of new firms and the introduction of profit incentives with only minor privatization. McMillan even advocates generalizing a Chinese approach to other transitional countries.

The most important ingredient of Chinese gradualism is the dual-track system. Laffont and Qian¹⁷ defend this institutional arrangement, arguing that the dual-track system represents a dynamic process in which reform starts in areas or sectors where political constraints are weak and then, after building up constituencies and momentum, extends to other regions or sectors. This propagation process of the dual track system will eventually lead to drastic reforms of overall institutions. Liu and Garinos¹⁸ argue that the dual track system is optimal because it facilitates competition but avoids the cost of ownership transfer.

The convergence school, however, disagrees on the correlation between gradualism and China’s economic performance. Sachs and Woo¹⁹ attribute China’s rapid economic growth to its extremely low initial condition which provides ample space for rapid catching up. China’s phenomenal growth is largely due to the changes outside the state sector, including the transfer of surplus agrarian labor to the industrial sector, the rapid development of non-state firms, and the openness to the world economy. All these changes have nothing to do with the gradualism²⁰. The increasing deterioration of SOE financial performance since the mid-1990s actually illustrates the failure of gradualism. Furthermore, they attack the dual-track system, arguing that it merely delays the most critical problems China has to overcome for the future.

Particularly, Sachs, Woo, and Yang²¹ point out that, if not recognized that economic reforms are only a small part of large scale constitutional transition, the assessment of reform performance will be very misleading. In this sense, China’s economic success so far might be illusionary because, under political monopoly due to the absence of constitutional transition, economic reform will be easily hijacked by state opportunism. China’s gradualism represented by the dual track system, despite its short-term benefits of buying out the vested interests, generates very high long-term costs of constitutional transition.

Qian²², however, argues that gradualism and convergence are not necessarily conflicting. Acknowledging that the transitional institutions such as the dual track system and fiscal contracting incur higher costs and generate lower benefit than those ‘best practice’ institutions, Qian emphasizes that they are the most feasible policy choices for Chinese reform. More importantly, the plan track was finally abolished and fiscal contracting was ultimately replaced with a rule-based modern tax system, illustrating that transitional institutions do not necessarily lead to a partial reform trap, and incremental reforms do not always create obstacles to block further reforms. The destiny of Chinese reform, of course, is to converge with those of existing market economies in developed countries. But the contribution of gradualism and transitional institutions innovated by Chinese reform should not be denied because of their ad hoc nature.

In brief, the interpretations of the nature of Chinese reform and the corresponding policy choices they advocated for the future are contentious. Empirical evidences are found supportive of different schools of arguments. To look closer at the truth of Chinese reform, this paper turns to the empirical studies of the Chinese style approach.

The Empirical Evidences

As summarized in table 2, the empirical evidences on Chinese economic and SOE reforms are mixed and inconclusive as well. Some found positive correlation between reform measures and efficiency or productivity improvement, while others found counterproductive or insignificant impact of reforms on firm performance. The following discussion of these empirical studies is organized around specific reform measures.

Table 2: Empirical Studies on Economic and SOE Reforms in China

The analysis above presents a brief description of the market oriented Chinese reform. The evaluations of this Chinese model, nevertheless, are mixed and inconclusive. The empirical studies verify the contributions of Chinese reform to the spectacular economic performance, but also find extreme limitations of the competition without privatization strategy. In fact, despite those market measures introduced since the end of the1970s, including the expanded autonomy, the use of incentives and contracts, and corporatization, the financial performance of SOEs has been increasingly deteriorating since the early 1990s. According to Sachs and Woo⁴², two-thirds of SOEs ran losses in 1992 even with a 13 percent output growth in that year. And in 1996, with total loss at 79.07 billion RMB and total profits at only 41.26 billion RMB⁴³, the whole SOE sector slid into deficit for the first time. The National Statistical Bureau reports that, in 1998, the ratio of total debt (the sum of liquid liabilities and long term liabilities) to total assets in SOEs is 65.9 percent, with 2.2 percent higher than average level nationwide; and the debt interest accounts for 37.9 percent of the total sale profits.⁴⁴

Having realized the limitations of competition without privatization, the 15^th Communist Party Congress in 1997 officially proclaimed an ownership transformation policy of ‘grabbing the large and letting go of the small ones,’ namely privatizing the medium and small SOEs but retaining the dominance of state ownership in large ones. China’s privatization, once again, is characterized by the dual-track strategy. Despite the reserved commitment of the leadership, China’s privatization accelerated. The Chinese reform formally entered its fourth phase of privatization.

PRIVATIZATION IN CHINA

China undertook the sale of state property to the private sectors – the strict definition of privatization, although occurring very late at the end of the 1990s, including the Share Issuance Privatizations (SIPs) and direct sale of state assets. Particularly, China’s commitment to a massive or large-scale ‘normal’ privatization program seemed intensified in recent years.

China started SIPs in December 1990 and July 1991 with the inauguration of two stock exchanges in Shanghai (SHSE) and Shenzhen (SZSE), respectively. SIPs grew rapidly in China, although with significant instability. In 2000, the total market capitalization in two stock markets accounted for more than half of GDP. The basic information of SIPs is summarized in table 3.

Table 3: Basic Information of Share Issuance Privatizations in China, 1992-2002⁴⁵

The blueprint for SIPs is the Company Law effective on July 1^st, 1994. In accordance with this law and other relevant regulations, tradable shares are divided into domestic (A- shares) and foreign (B-shares, sold solely to foreign investors and residents from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan; H-shares, issued in Hong Kong stock market; and N-shares, issued in New York stock market). The average ratio of foreign shares to all companies is less than 2.5 percent⁴⁶. Due to their insignificance, analyses of foreign shares are simply omitted in this research.

Not all shares in any listed SOEs are publicly tradable. That is, the publicly traded A-shares only account for a portion of the total shares in listed SOEs. The Company Law requires the ratio of A-shares to be 25 percent or more of total outstanding shares when the company makes its initial public offering. But in practice this ordinance was not followed particularly in the early stages⁴⁷, the actual ratio of A-shares ranges from 17 to 33 percent of total shares⁴⁸. A-shares are the only type of equity that is permitted to be traded among domestic investors at the two exchanges. Hence the total shares or the total market capitalizations in Chinese stock markets do not reflect the true traded volume. Instead, China uses an unusual indicator of “float market capitalization” to measure the value of tradable A-shares, which accounts for about 33 percent of total market capitalization in recent years. The effects of A-shares on firm performance in China are inconclusive and controversial. Most scholars argue that A-shares have a trivial impact on corporate governance owing to two reasons: A-shares are extremely dispersed and the turnover rates of A-shares are exceptionally high (the average holding period is about 1 to 2 months, compared with 18 months in United States⁴⁹, indicating the investors have low motivations and usually free-ride to monitor firm performance because of the loose correlation of cost and benefit of such behaviors. However, still some researchers argue that A-shares have positive performance effects owing to their nature of pure private ownership.

Besides tradable A-shares, a listed SOE has three other shares: state shares, legal person shares, and employee shares. State shares are held by the central government or local governments, but usually controlled by state asset management agencies, financial bureaus, or solely state-owned investment companies. To preserve the dominance of state ownership, it is required that SOEs must issue shares to the government for free and these state shares must not be less than 35 percent of total shares. This requirement, however, was not well followed in practice either. In 1995, the state controlled 35 percent of total shares in SHSE listed firms but only 22 percent in SZSE⁵⁰. Nevertheless, in many cases, the largest shareholder is always the state, without any comparable and contestable second or third largest shareholders. By 1999, for example, 42 percent of the largest shareholders are state shares⁵¹. State shares are not permitted to be publicly traded, but are transferable to domestic institutions even including private institutions upon the approval of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). SIPs in China, therefore, are a kind of partial privatization. Although theoretically some researchers argue the desirability of partial privatization⁵² , generally, most view it as a poor governance structure, making monitoring difficult and the mechanisms of takeover and bankruptcy incredible.

Legal person shares are held by domestic institutions, including industrial enterprises, stock companies, trust and investment companies, foundations and funds, construction and real estate companies, transportation and power companies, and technology and research institutes⁵³. Most of them, however, are eventually state owned. As in the case of state shares, many of the largest shareholders are the holders of legal person shares. In 1995, for example, 24 percent of legal person shareholders in SHSE-listed firms held more than 50 percent of total outstanding shares and the same case for 25 percent of SZSE-listed firms⁵⁴. Legal person shares are not allowed to be publicly traded, but transferable upon the approval of CSRC. Hence in most cases, the state directly or indirectly (through legal person shares) owns and controls listed companies. Although most domestic institutions are eventually state owned, those with legal person status are somehow independent from the state with separate accounting systems and self-responsibility for benefits and losses. Thus legal person shareholders are suggested to have more incentives than the state to monitor listed firms for efficiency improvement and profit maximization. But still other researchers argue that legal person shares are vulnerable to state interference, and, moreover, sometimes legal person shareholders may benefit themselves at the expense of other shareholders⁵⁵.

Employee shares only make up less than 2 percent of total shares, functioning primarily as benefits for employees and management rather than an incentive mechanism and completely unimportant in firm operation. After having been held for 6 to 12 months, employee shares can be sold in the open stock market upon the approval of CSRC. The issuance of employee shares was discontinued in 1998, making it even more insignificant in the ownership structure.

To summarize, the patterns of ownership structure in Chinese listed firms through Share Issuance Privatizations (SIPs) are as follows:

1. SIPs in China are partial privatizations. The state still retains substantial shares in most of the listed firms.

2. Correspondingly, ownership structures are relatively concentrated. Tenev et al. find in their sample of 257 SHSE-listed firms in 1999 that, on average, the three largest shareholders held 58 percent of total shares, of which the largest one held 47 percent, 8 percent for the second largest and 3 percent for the third largest⁵⁶.

3. The total shares are equally divided among three parts: state shares, legal person shares, and tradable A-shares, with each accounting for approximately 30 percent of total outstanding shares.

4. The tradable A-shares are highly dispersed with exceptionally high turnover rates, indicating individual investors in China primarily seek short-term trading profits rather than dividend or long term growth.

5. Legal person shareholders are similar to the institutional investors in the advanced market economies, with most of them eventually state owned or controlled.

Consequently, the governance structures, consisting of the board of directors, supervisory committee, and shareholder annual meeting, are biased to the control of state or legal person shareholders. First of all, the board of directors is overrepresented by state and legal person shareholders. Although each of state shares, legal person shares, and tradable A-shares makes up approximately 30 percent of total shares, the board membership controlled by A-shares is extremely low. Xu and Wang find that, in their sample of 154 listed firms in 1995, individual shareholders have no more than 0.3 percent of the total board seats on average⁵⁷. Tenev el al. find a much higher ratio in their sample of 257 SHSE-listed firms⁵⁸, but still with no more than 6 percent of total board membership representing individual shareholders. On contrast, based on different samples, some find that the state is highly overrepresented with 50 percent of board membership⁵⁹, others find the legal persons are overrepresented with 63 percent of board seats⁶⁰. Secondly, such highly biased governance structures occurred in the supervisory committee and shareholder annual meeting as well, characterized with extremely low presence of individual shareholders. In short, the governance structure is not proportional to the ownership structure, with biases to the state or legal person shareholders.

These ownership and governance structures seem problematic, reflected in the deteriorating performance of Chinese stock markets in the past years. The average earnings per share was 0.35 RMB in 1994, 0.27 in 1995, 0.29 in 1996, 0.248 in 1997, 0.185 in 1998, 0.2069 in 1999, 0.211 in 2000, 0.136 in 2001, and 0.127 in 2002⁶¹, while China’s GDP was soaring during the same period. However, some researchers argue that such structural arrangements, even though inconsistent with the best practices, are feasible adaptations to the particular political and economic conditions in China, reflecting the government’s serious concerns to protect stock markets and their commitments for continuous Share Issuance Privatizations. In other words, through remaining substantial state ownership and disproportionately high state control, the government can maintain an orderly flow of privatization so as not to overwhelm the fledgling stock markets and thus make it possible for following Share Issuance Privatizations in the future. Meanwhile, high state shares signal the government’s confidence in the listed firms and a business guarantee, lowering the ex ante uncertainties for domestic investors⁶². Nevertheless, others argue that if the firm performance continued deteriorating, both the concerns to protect stock markets and the optimal signal effects would fail. Resorting to empirical evidences, therefore, is the best way to clarify the debate and figure out what on earth the effects of such ownership and governance structures on firm performance are. The findings from these empirical studies on Share Issuance Privatization (SIPs) in China are summarized in table 4 as follow:

Table 4: Empirical Studies on Share Issuance Privatizations (SIPs) in China

CONCLUSION

The objective of this paper is to provide an understanding of the nature of China’s SOE reform. It began with the description of the Chinese model for economic reform. This Chinese approach, despite its spectacular economic achievements, demonstrated an incomplete and informal nature in many of its institutions. These limitations were primarily from the central strategy and assumption of the Chinese SOE reform, namely SOEs could be improved simply with competitive forces, significant ownership transformation was unnecessary. Market measures, including enterprise autonomy, incentives, price liberalization, and corporatization, were all introduced and tried to save SOEs. However, SOE performance has been increasingly deteriorating since the early 1990s.

Having realized the limitations of the Chinese model, China officially initiated privatization programs in the late 1990s. Particularly, the generally defined privatization, the sale of state property, particularly the Share Issuance Privatizations (SIPs), developed rapidly in the 1990s. These privatizations, however, were tainted by the incomplete and informal nature of Chinese reform, reflected in their biased ownership structure and ineffective corporate governance, which is further embodied in the limited performance improvement in those listed firms.

It seems that privatization is clearly the answer for China’s future SOE reform. Particularly, the empirical studies show that private ownership outperformed state ownership in almost every area. In order to maintain the current momentum of rapid economic growth, China should commit itself in a comprehensive and fundamental ownership transformation from state ownership to private ownership. China’s experience in SOE reform, therefore, only provided proofs that privatization is ultimately the fundamental way for economic transition, although it requires more deliberate design and more effective management.