State Council Issues Guiding Opinions For SOE Reform

On September 14, the Communist Party Central Committee and State Council released a set of high level Guiding Opinions aimed at reforming China's state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector and increasing SOE competitiveness and efficiency, while protecting state assets. 

The Guiding Opinions call for a number of changes:

• Encourage minority equity sales to non-SOE entities
• Promote SOEs to list on the stock market
• Change the manner of appointing SOE directors and executives
• Advance "mixed ownership" SOE equity structures

It remains unclear to what extent the government will allow non-state capital to invest in state-owned assets. The Guiding Opinions did not offer any specific information or timeline for next steps.