Regional Differences In Mixed Ownership Reform Of State-owned Enterprises

Mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises, as the core link of China’s economic reformation, has been developing for nearly 40 years so far. After the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC, state-owned enterprises began to deepen the reform process in the new period. As the main event of reform of state-owned enterprises, mixed ownership reform is highly concerned. In the macroscopic aspect, mixed ownership reform is an importantguarantee of the realization of China’s basic economic system. In the micro level, it is the diversity of equities by introducing social capital, which based on the robust institutions and perfect administration structure of state-owned enterprise; it is a comprehensive mixing process of capital, institution and corporate governance structure. In the practice, each province gradually formulated reform policies to promote the reform process. However, since each province has a different reform background and a continuity in policy-making, there must exist regional differences among the different provinces in the reform process. And this regional difference will eventually influence reform effects of the mixed ownership reform.In order to quantitatively analyze this regional difference and its influence, this article quantifies mixed ownership reform process of China’s 31 provinces (except HK SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan province) from the aspects of reform speed, reform breadth and reform strength, divides them into three reform echelons based on the reform scoring standard, and analyzes the differences among each reform echelon. On this basis, this article demonstrates the regional difference through empirical analysis from the aspects of listed state-owned enterprises’operating efficiency and growth rate, and explores the causes of this regional difference.By empirical analysis of the overall sample, this article finds that mixed ownership reform, as one of the key measures of state-owned enterprises reform, significantly improves the operating efficiency and growth rate of state-owned enterprise. Through the classified regression, this article also finds there are conspicuous regional differences among each reform echelon in terms of reform impact. Concretely speaking, after the mixed ownership reform, the growth rate of state-owned enterprises belonging to first echelon and second echelon was significantly improved, while the profitability of state-owned enterprises belonging to third echelon gained a significant improvement. Besides, after the reform process entered into the deepening stage, the increase of non-state-owned shares proportion suppressed the improvement of operating efficiency and growth rate of state-owned enterprise rather than encouraged. Hence, I believe that the reformation priority at present stage should be transferred to strengthening institution and improving corporate governance structure by the introduction of social capital, and reform strategies should be formulated according to actual conditions of different provinces and regions, which will lay a solid foundation for the future deepening reform.