Chinese state-owned enterprise State Grid paid 2 billion Euro for a 35-percent stake in Italian energy company CDP Reti in 2014. Then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (center, standing) with then-State Grid Chairman Liu Zhenya (center left, sitting) at the celebratory signing. Credit: Italy’s Palazzo Chigi, Creative Commons
China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) is perhaps the world’s most powerful business manager. With trillions of dollars in assets under its watch, this government body has oversight over 96 of the country’s biggest state-owned enterprises, including China’s oil majors, its telecommunications giants and its colossal chemical and shipbuilding operations.
SASAC was set up in 2003, to assume control of state firms from various state ministries and commissions, and its role is to manage, approve mergers, appoint senior executives and to ensure that the massive state sector is operating efficiently.Nicholas Lardy, at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has stressed that SASACs decision to create bigger and bigger state firms has not improved their efficiency. It’s been referred to as the “nanny” for big state enterprises.Tobacco and financial SOEs are managed through different centralized entities.
SASAC’s companies
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
