Xing Huina:

Thank you. Now the floor is open for questions. Please identify the media outlet you represent before raising questions.

Xinhua News Agency:

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, historic achievements and changes have been made in the cause of the Party and the country. Would you please introduce the role of SOEs in that process? Thanks.

Weng Jieming:

Thank you for your question. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, historic achievements and changes have been made in the cause of the Party and the country. SOEs have played an important role and made important contributions to it.

First, SOEs have served as a pillar in promoting the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.

In terms of economic scale, SOEs have strongly enhanced China's economic strength. By the end of 2021, the total assets of the enterprises under the supervision and administration of the SASAC and its local commissions had reached 259.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 2.6 times over the end of 2012, with an average annual increase of 15.4%. From 2012 to 2021, these enterprises achieved 11.14 trillion yuan in value-added with an average annual growth rate of 9%, 2.3 percentage points higher than the average annual growth rate of GDP.

In terms of economic quality, SOEs have strongly improved high-quality development. Most of the enterprises under the supervision and administration of the SASAC and its local commissions are in important industries and key areas that concern national security, are important to the economy and people's lives, and protect the lifelines of the Chinese economy. In recent years, through continuously deepening reform and strengthening innovation, the enterprises have constantly enhanced development quality and returns and strongly led and driven the high-quality development of the enterprises in related industries. They have fostered a number of advanced manufacturing clusters in such fields as electronic information and rail transport. Meanwhile, these enterprises undertook about 80% of the country's task of easing steel overcapacity. The energy conservation and emission reduction targets of the 13th Five-Year Plan period were met ahead of schedule and surpassed. In 2021, the comprehensive energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of the output value of central enterprises decreased by about 33% compared with 2012.

In terms of economic opening-up, SOEs have strongly promoted the better integration of the Chinese economy into the world economy. Focusing on the high-quality joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative, SOEs have continued to enhance their capabilities to allocate resources globally. Central enterprises currently have over 8,000 overseas agencies and projects, with their total assets reaching nearly 8 trillion yuan. Several signature projects have been launched, such as the Piraeus port in Greece and the China-Laos railway, and are doing well. A number of high-quality products such as the high-speed rail and nuclear power have been expanded overseas and strongly led upstream and downstream companies in the industrial chain to make overseas presence together. 

Second, SOEs played a primary role in ensuring the implementation of major strategies of the Party and the state.

In terms of implementing China's major regional development strategies, SOEs focused on supporting the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, the building of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin. We further promoted coordination and cooperation among SOEs at the central and local levels. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the SOEs have signed a total of 3,849 projects, and they have participated in more than 900 projects in Xiong'an New Area, which I just introduced.

In terms of ensuring the security of basic public services, central SOEs built the world's largest and leading internet infrastructure nationwide and actively carried out a series of infrastructure projects with large investments and thin returns, such as the Sichuan-Tibet power grid interconnection project, the central Tibet power grid interconnection project and the power grid interconnection project in Tibet's Ngari prefecture. They pushed forward a new round of work to upgrade rural power grids and extended the grid coverage to all villages. They have effectively supported China to build itself into a leader in manufacturing, cyberspace, and transport, and the building of Digital China, and firmly safeguarded national security, energy and resource security, food security, and information security.

In terms of providing support for major events and tasks of the country, SOEs stuck to the highest level of standards, in accordance with strict requirements, and took effective measures to ensure the construction of projects and provide related services. They have made great contributions to the successful holding of major events, such as the ceremonies marking the centenary of the CPC and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, and the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games.

Third, SOEs played a leading role in pushing forward efforts in achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels.

SOEs boosted their sci-tech strength of national strategic importance. In the past ten years, central SOEs built more than 700 national R&D platforms and seven innovation consortia. They have spent a combined total of 6.2 trillion yuan on R&D, registering an annual growth rate of over 10%. At the end of 2021, SOEs have a total of 1.07 million R&D personnel, up 53% from the end of 2012, and 241 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which accounts for one-seventh of the total in the country.

SOEs made breakthroughs in the bottleneck of critical technical problems. They focused on enhancing capabilities to make innovations independently, ramped up efforts to make breakthroughs in core technologies, and filled the gaps in many sectors. Progress has been made in solving the bottleneck of technical problems in the sectors of integrated circuits, 5G communication, high-speed rail, large aircraft development, engines, machine tools, energy, and power, among others.

SOEs achieved world-class scientific and technological advances. In recent years, central SOEs saw a constant stream of major sci-tech achievements in manned spaceflight, lunar exploration, deep-sea exploration, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, 5G applications, and the self-developed aircraft carrier. They constructed a series of landmark projects, including the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the Baihetan hydropower station, the Deep-Sea No.1 gas field, and the nuclear power unit using the Hualong One reactor, and the demonstration project of the Shidaowan nuclear power plant with high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology. All of these greatly inspired people to become more proud, confident, and assured in their identity as Chinese.

Fourth, SOEs played a significant role in living up to people's aspirations for a better life.

SOEs played an exemplary role in making greater contributions to society. Over the past decade, taxes paid by central SOEs totaled 18.2 trillion yuan. They turned over 1.3 trillion yuan of profits from the state capital operations to the government and appropriated 1.2 trillion yuan worth of state capital to replenish social security funds. They also carried out policies to ease difficulties for other companies. By taking measures such as cutting the price of gas and electricity and lowering rates for internet service, toll fees, and rent, SOEs have greatly reduced the pressure on SMEs to run businesses.

SOEs shouldered the responsibilities to improve people's lives. Central SOEs spared no effort in support of winning the fight against poverty. Since 2016, the fund from central SOEs for poverty reduction reached nearly 100 billion yuan. A total of 248 poverty-stricken national counties received assistance from the central SOEs and have been removed from the country's poverty list. They also helped lift 12,000 poor places out of poverty.

SOEs took the initiative to protect the safety of people. In 2020, faced with the sudden attack of COVID-19, SOEs reacted swiftly to the Party's command and shouldered heavy responsibilities, and built Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals quickly. They turned to produce or expanded the production of anti-COVID-19 material supplies at all costs. This year, the sporadic resurgence of COVID-19 was reported nationwide. SOEs stepped up efforts in supporting the fight against the pandemic in Jilin province and Shanghai, demonstrating their loyalty to the Party and serving the people with actual actions. 

Over the past decade, SOEs have made significant contributions to and played an important role in supporting the cause of the Party and the people, which made us feel more confident in developing the SOEs and more assured in overcoming challenges ahead. We will make further contributions to the development of our new journey. Thank you.