A senior political advisor Monday afternoon sounded an alarm against tremendous losses of China's state assets incurred by the poor management of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), calling for a "more stringent responsibility system" on SOE managers.

"In 2004, the SOEs under the direct administration of the central authorities reported overall losses worth some 400 billion Yuan (US$48 billion), while the losses reported by the country's top four State-owned commercial banks in the past few years have totaled nearly 2 trillion yuan (US$241 billion)," said Chen Shouyi, a member of China's top advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), from east China's coastal city of Ningbo.

"Although these losses had been offset in every year's central budget with approval of the Ministry of Finance, it was our people who actually paid the money," said Chen in an open speech at a full meeting of the 10th CPPCC National Committee, which is now holding its 9.5-day annual full session in Beijing.

The CPPCC annual session offers advisors from all over China a chance to air their opinions and offer advices on major political, economic and social affairs of the country.

"With several SOE giants getting into serious troubles recently, we have to ask who on earth will be held accountable for the huge losses suffered by the SOEs?" asked Chen, citing the cases of the China Reserve Cotton Management Corp. and China Aviation Oil, which lost a total of more than US$600 million due to lax management and adventurous market speculations.

"We must adopt a more stringent responsibility system and implement it strictly, to let every incompetent and irresponsible SOE manager pay for their errors and mistakes," suggested Chen.

Apart from economic penalty, criminal punishment should also be introduced to deal with those SOE managers causing huge losses "without mercy," said Chen.

He also suggested that in the future, any huge state assets losses should not be easily offset with only the verification and approval of the Finance Ministry, but must be submitted to the National People's Congress or its Standing Committee, China's top legislature, for examination and also be subject to the supervision of the CPPCC and the entire society.

(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2005)