State-Owned Enterprise Reform · Full chronicle and history

Politburo Standing Committee member and Executive Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang went to Xiong'an New Area, where he personally unveiled and delivered a speech at the 100th central state-owned enterprise under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), the "National Data Group."

In 2002, workers at the Liaoyang Ferroalloy Plant launched weeks of protests over long-term unpaid wages and losing everything after being laid off; worker representatives were subsequently arrested and sentenced on charges of illegal assembly, inciting subversion of state power, and others, on Zhu Rongji's signal.

The central authorities issued Document No. 10, characterizing the mass layoff of workers as an inevitable process in the economic transition, acknowledging that it would bring temporary difficulties to some workers, while claiming that this accords with the long-term interests of the working class.

Zhu Rongji replicated in the State Council Shanghai's approach to streamlining processes, cutting the number of ministries and commissions in half from 40; large numbers of cadres at division level and above were reassigned to the private sector or took early retirement, making the scale of personnel changes unprecedented.

Starting in 1995, Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji proposed the "grasping the large and letting go of the small" reform for state-owned enterprises, requiring them to gradually withdraw from non-critical industries.

Zhu Rongji went to Northeast China and, by auditing accounts and injecting capital into banks, successfully cleared hundreds of billions of yuan of inter-enterprise triangle debt.

The restructuring of state-owned enterprises led by Zhu Rongji officially recorded 28 million workers laid off in just six years; in total, about 60 million jobs disappeared from the state sector, including public sector positions. The northeast region was hit hardest, with its share of GDP falling from about 10% to 4.6%.

The Ministry of Gas Industry of the Soviet Union was reorganized as a whole into a corporate group. Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin made a glamorous transformation into a boss, and the ministry turned both its personnel and assets entirely into a company.

With Qiao Shi's support and Zhao Ziyang's approval, China Kanghua was officially established. It subsequently rapidly split into numerous subsidiaries, becoming a symbol of official profiteering and privileges.