Seminar on the Theory and Practice of State-Owned Enterprise Reform and Development in the Process of Chinese Modernization Held in Beijing
On July 20, 2024, the Seminar on the Theory and Practice of State-Owned Enterprise Reform and Development within the Process of Chinese-path Modernization was held in Miyun, Beijing. Nearly 50 experts and scholars specializing in the research of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform and development engaged in a thematic discussion on deepening the reform of state-owned assets and SOEs to promote Chinese-path modernization, as proposed by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee [1].
The participating experts and scholars held that the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee re-emphasized the "Two Unswervinglys" [2]. Society as a whole must "unswervingly encourage, support, and guide the development of the non-public sector," while also "unswervingly consolidating and developing the public sector." This involves promoting state-owned capital and SOEs to become stronger, better, and larger, continuously improving the core competitiveness and enhancing the core functions of state-owned assets and enterprises. It requires actively driving state-owned assets and enterprises to serve major national strategies and fully leveraging their roles in scientific and technological innovation, industrial control, and security support, thereby better demonstrating the strategic supporting role of state-owned assets and enterprises in the construction of Chinese-path modernization.
Participating experts and scholars proposed that to fully implement the mandate to "unswervingly encourage, support, and guide the development of the non-public sector," it is necessary not only to encourage and support the growth of the non-public economy—including the private economy—but also to correctly guide it to serve Chinese-path modernization. The participants suggested that the influence, control, and lead-driven power of SOEs should be fully exerted. This involves strengthening the positioning of SOEs as "chain leaders" [3] in production chains, their role as "stabilizers" of the national economy, their capacity as "source points" [4] for core technologies, their supporting function for economic security, their material foundation for common prosperity, and their function as the economic base for the Party’s governance. Through these means, SOEs can drive, pull, support, and promote the high-quality development of the non-public sector, including the private economy.
Analysis by the participating experts and scholars indicated that the growth of the state-owned economy and the private economy is not a zero-sum relationship of "one's gain is the other's loss" (cǐ zhǎng bǐ xiāo) [5]. Rather, it is a relationship of "coupled symbiosis" and mutual development. It is necessary to abandon the conventional mindset of a "zero-sum game" between the state-owned and private economies and earnestly implement the decision and deployment of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee to "promote the complementary advantages and common development of economies under all forms of ownership." This will drive both the state-owned and private economies to grow together, assisting in the basic realization of socialist modernization by 2035 and the comprehensive buildup of a Great Modern Socialist Country by the middle of this century.
It is reported that this seminar was co-hosted by the China Society of Political Economy and the editorial department of the English-language journal International Critical Thought. It was organized by the Department of Marxist Political Economy within the Division of Marxist Theory Research at the Institute of Marxism Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the CASS Research Center for Marxist Economic and Social Development, and the editorial department of the English-language journal World Review of Political Economy. On July 21, 2024, a conference on the development of English-language Marxist journals and an editorial meeting for the Series on Chinese Political Economy will also be held.
(Contributed by Gao Yarong, Master’s student at the School of Marxism, University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)