China Warned of Ballooning SOEs

Former chief of the World Bank Robert Zoellick cautioned China on Sunday about the increasing size of state-owned enterprises, or SOEs, according to a transcript on his talk published by domestic news site sohu.com, adding to an increasingly heated debate on the relationship between the public and private sectors in the Chinese economy, Xinhua reported. The remarks, made during the China Development Forum Special Session, came at a delicate time in China, as domestic debate heats up on how to evaluate the results of 40 years of reform and opening-up and the increasingly conflicting relationship between state-owned and private-sector companies. An article published on news platform Jinri Toutiao by finance industry insider Wu Xiaoping caused an uproar by claiming that China’s private-sector economy had “completed its mission” and should fade away in favor of the state-owned economy to help China face a changing international landscape. “Chinese private companies are without doubt the main force of China’s economic development. State-owned companies just don’t have the ability to replace this function,” Tian Yun, vice president of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, said.