国企老总:我们没有得到应有的尊重

Committee meetings of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference are normally quite dry affairs, with industry leaders and other civic figures offering bland praise for whatever the central leadership is doing. But at a meeting of the 37th economic committee on Wednesday, the leaders of some of China's most prominent state-owned enterprises vented their anger at how the state sector has lately been treated in the court of public opinion.

China's massive stimulus last year, fed by public infrastructure investment and a huge lending binge by state-owned banks, has been widely criticized inside and outside China as disproportionately favoring the state-owned companies at the expense of private ones. A phrase has even been coined to describe the trend: 'guojin mintui,' which means 'the state advances and private companies retreat.'

At Wednesday's meeting, the leaders of several state-owned enterprises, seated around a conference table, seemed to suddenly lose their tempers with the 'guojin mintui' narrative. It was a rare showing of candor by the industry leaders, especially considering that it took place in one of the few CPPCC meetings open to the media. Chinese and foreign media reporters sitting on the sidelines of the meeting were surprised at the emotional outbursts.

The immediate catalyst appeared to be comments by a fellow CPPCC delegate, Zhang Shiping, the head of an audit committee in the All China Federation of Trade Unions, the previous day. Chinese media reported that Zhang noted derisively that managers at state-owned companies earn 18 times as much as their 'front-line workers.'

'Companies with the biggest difference between top executives and ordinary workers, it's absolutely not state-owned companies.' said Liu Deshu, president of state-owned Sinochem Group. Gesturing toward the empty seat of fellow committee member Yang Yuanqing, chief executive of private computer-marker Lenovo Group, Liu continued: 'Today Yang Yuanqing isn't here. If we asked Yang Yuanqing what his salary is compared to his workers' salary, whose difference would be bigger?'

Increasingly agitated, Liu even called out his estimate of Yang's pay last year, saying it was 36 million yuan ($5.3 million). 'Among us who work for state-owned companies, who makes that much?'

According to Lenovo's 2008-2009 annual report, Yang Yuanqing earned total compensation of $7.23 million in 2009, including salary, bonuses, share-based benefits and other compensation. His base salary was $846,000.

Yang Kaisheng, president of state-owned lender Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., weighed in with his own criticism of the salary gap statistic. 'In yesterday's talk, (Zhang) was comparing state-owned enterprise executives with 'front line workers.' What is that, security guards? Or people in the cafeteria?...I think it's very unlikely that this statistic is accurate.'

Even more passionate was Sun Wenjie, chairman of the board of China State Construction Engineering Corp., who thundered against the social responsibilities that state-owned companies find themselves saddled with.

'State-owned enterprise leaders are the leaders of their own companies, not the leaders of the country. We're mostly concerned with efficiency. If I manage my company efficiently and fairly, that's enough,' he said to applause from around the table.

Sun mentioned that he personally had suffered during the Cultural Revolution growing up in the countryside, before moving on to complain about restrictions on investment in property by state-owned companies.

'Why can private companies invest in property but state companies can't? In our real-estate operations, we don't get one cent from the government, it is entirely from market competition.'

'I call on everyone here to speak up and say a few things about state-owned companies,' Sun said. 'We are not trying to destroy this country. Last year, we were on the front lines! If it wasn't for our efforts, GDP would have fallen down from the sky! We employ so many workers. When we finish a building, it helps 100 families toward prosperity. We are people, not gods!'