广东国有企业改革

Since the 1980s and China's "opening up", Guangdong has been a pioneer for new reform initiatives. The southern province set an ambitious timetable last August to reform its state-owned enterprise, known as SOEs. Its main goal is for all the state firms in the province to list or at least own a listed company by 2020.

Having worked for the Yuexiu Group for over 16 years, Tang Shouchun is now the vice president of this modern services conglomerate. Its core businesses are real estate, finance, transport and infrastructure.

Tang started off as financial manager in a subsidiary of Yuexiu and witnessed two rounds of State Owned Enterprise Reforms here.

"In the recent decade, we have turned Yuexiu Group into a market-oriented enterprise. First we restructured our business operation so that it became more focused. Originally we had trade, water and transport infrastructure, real estate, paper making, hotel and other traditional businesses. Now we’ve stripped off traditional manufacturing, trade, international construction and hotel businesses," Tang said.

After the latest round of SOE reform, by the end of 2014, Yuexiu Group ranked first in asset size of all state-owned enterprise groups in Guangzhou, with total assets exceeding 300 billion RMB. But challenges still remain.

"One of the biggest challenges is that SOEs like us face very fierce competition in the market. We have to improve our work efficiency and capabilities under the external pressure. As a player in the market we no longer have the protection from the government. Another challenge is that SOES lack endogenous dynamics. We have made innovations in this aspect but there is still a lag before these changes in the system actually happen," Tang said.

So far Yuexiu Group has taken measures like continuing to restructure its businesses, building up modern business management system, opening up to private capitals and establishing an effective incentive system for employees. Particularly, they began to issue employee stock options and have securitized 90% of its assets.

Besides the Yuexiu Group, there are 33 other state owned enterprises supervised by Guangzhou State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Some of them still have businesses outside that are deemed to be strategic sectors. They have had some bad years, but that may be about to change.

In this new round of SOE reform, we hope we can concentrate state-owned assets to SOES which have a stronger management team and are in better industries. Our general plan is to make SOEs more marketized, securitized, internationalized, and adopt a mixed-ownership structure

In the future, Guangzhou State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission also plans to consolidate and restructure SOEs both under its supervision and not. The ultimate goal is to condense over 130 state firms into about 30.