Key enterprises are the large enterprises identified by the State, ministries or provinces and autonomous regions and quite a number of them are state-owned. There are different types of key enterprises: national key enterprises: enterprises under the Administration of the Central Committee for Enterprise Affairs; key enterprises identified by the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities under the direct administration of the central government; the 100 pilot enterprises picked up by the State Council for piloting the modern enterprise system; the parent companies (i.e. the core companies) of the State-appointed pilot enterprise groups. There could be overlapping cases among the above-mentioned categories of key enterprises.

Examining the market-oriented development of the key enterprises supplements to the analysis on the degree of marketization of the above-mentioned non-state owned sector and state-owned enterprises. Generally speaking, the State exercises stricter control over the key enterprises than non-key enterprises, and the relaxation of control on the key enterprises would mean the marketization of other types enterprises were on an even greater magnitude. The Enterprise Survey Organization of the National Bureau of Statistics of China conducted a tagged statistical investigation on the establishment of modern enterprise system in 2001 involving 4371 key enterprises of the country, including 514 national key enterprises, 181 key state-owned enterprises under the administration of the central government, 93 enterprises out of the 100 pilot enterprises picked up by the State Council for establishing modern enterprise system, 121 parent companies of the State Council appointed national pilot enterprise groups and over 3000 provincial key and pilot enterprises, from which the market-oriented development of the key enterprises are presented.

By the end of 2001, 3322 out of the 4371 key enterprises that accepted investigation were turned into joint stock limited companies, covering 76 percent of the total. Among them there were 866 wholly state-owned companies, 1098 companies with limited liability. 1191 joint stock limited companies, accounting for 26.07 percent, 33.05 percent and 35.85 percent respectively of the total enterprises that underwent ownership transformation. Of the transformed enterprises, the wholly non-state owned companies (i.e. other types of companies with limited liability or shares) took up a proportion of 73.93 percent of the total number of restructured key enterprises.

In terms of each type of key enterprises, the ownership transformation covered 77.2 percent of the 514 national key enterprises, 21 percent of the 181 national key enterprises under the administration of the central government, 88.2 percent of the 93 enterprises out of the 100 pilot enterprises picked up by the State Council for establishing modern enterprise system, 52.1 percent of the 121 parent companies of the State Council appointed national pilot enterprise groups, 80.2 percent of the 1955 provincial (municipal, regional) key enterprises, 83.2 percent of the 2222 pilot enterprises appointed by the province (municipality/ autonomous region) for establishing modern enterprises system.

Out of the 3322 restructured key enterprises, 3118 had completed reappraisal of stocks and assets and defining the property rights, on which basis a clearly defined enterprise fund contributor system was established. The availability of fund contributors in transformed enterprises reached 93.9 percent and that for all key enterprises was 71.36 percent. In 2001, the sum total of the registered capital of the 3322 transformed enterprises amounted to 1,143.7 billion yuan, of which 738.3 billion yuan were capital invested by the State, accounting for 64.55 percent; capital of other sources including collective capital, legal person capital, individual capital and foreigner's capital amounted to 405.4 billion yuan, accounting for 35.45 percent, meaning the former unitary and exclusive property right structure was broken and the situation with only one dominating shareholder was being changed.

It is obvious, then, the ownership transformation has preliminarily realized systemic, scientific and standardized management of assets, and the enterprise legal person system with "clarified property rights and clearly defined duties all powers" was basically established.

(China.org.cn November 7, 2003)