China News Service:

The Central Economic Work Conference stated that we should seek progress while maintaining stability, promote stability through progress, and establish the new before abolishing the old. What work will the SASAC and central SOEs take as priorities to better contribute to consolidating and strengthening the momentum of economic recovery? Thank you.

Yuan Ye:

Thank you for your question. I’ll answer this. As you mentioned, the Central Economic Work Conference issued plans and arrangements for the work this year. The SASAC has conscientiously implemented the plans of the conference. We made detailed and overall arrangements for implementation at a meeting of heads of central SOEs held not long ago. At the meeting, we proposed that in the next stage of development, central SOEs should pay more attention to high-quality development and focus on improving value creation capacity during the process. In terms of value creation capacity, we encourage central SOEs to enhance value in five aspects. First is value-added; second is functional value; third is economic value added; fourth is the proportion of income and value added of emerging strategic industries; and fifth is brand value. The purpose is to guide enterprises to resolutely implement the guiding principles of the Central Economic Work Conference; to seek progress while maintaining stability, promote stability through progress and establish the new before abolishing the old; to continue to strengthen core functions and improve core competitiveness; to grow bigger, better, and stronger in the process of serving national strategies; and to better achieve unity between economic, political and social benefits. 

To be specific, by encouraging central SOEs to enhance value added, we guide them to promote the development of the state-owned sector and strive to achieve satisfactory returns for shareholders, profits for companies, income for employees and tax revenues for the country, thereby making a greater contribution to national economic growth. By emphasizing improvement in functional value, we guide central SOEs to play a proactive role in serving national strategies, safeguarding national security, and safeguarding and improving people’s well-being, and to help bring into full play the strategic support of the state-owned sector. By calling for greater economic value added, we guide central SOEs to optimize investment direction and layout, curb the impulse for blind investment, reduce inefficient and ineffective capital investment, and generate more profitable income and profit with operating cash flow. By emphasizing increased proportion of income and value added of emerging strategic industries, we encourage central SOEs to accelerate the shift to innovation-driven growth, and to play a leading role in developing new productive forces and making new growth drivers stronger at a faster pace. By highlighting brand value, we encourage central SOEs to enhance capacity-building and image-building, improve the added value and leading role of brands, and accelerate the building of world-class enterprises. 

Specifically, we will give priority this year to work in five aspects.

First, we will focus on improving quality and performance and make every effort to advance the continued recovery of China’s economy. At the beginning of this year, the SASAC launched a special action to enhance quality and performance and ensure stable growth and give play to the key role of effective investment. At the same time, efforts are being made to improve the quality of listed companies controlled by central SOEs and to enhance returns for investors. We will strengthen lean management and make more contributions to economic and social development by comprehensively improving the quality and efficiency of central SOE operations.

Second, we will focus on advancing industrial innovation through scientific and technological innovation, and develop new productive forces and advance new-type industrialization at a faster pace. We encourage enterprises to further reinforce their principal role in scientific and technological innovation and make greater efforts to gather innovative resources, strengthen organization of innovation and build a better innovation ecosystem, and speed up efforts to secure breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. We will keep working on both emerging strategic industries and traditional industries, actively develop new industries and new arenas, and accelerate efforts to consolidate the foundation of and transform traditional industries, and make industrial and supply chains more resilient and secure, so as to provide more support for modernizing the industrial system.

Third, we will focus on deepening the reform of state-owned capital and SOEs and accelerate the building of new modern SOEs. We will carry out the action to deepen the reform of SOEs, establish a sound modern corporate system with distinctive Chinese features and a market-oriented operating mechanism, further improve supervision methods, and raise service efficiency, so as to add vitality and boost momentum for the high-quality development of enterprises.

Fourth, we will focus on enhancing the capacity for providing strategic support and meeting basic needs and better serve China's overall economic and social development. We will resolutely implement the coordinated regional development strategy and major regional strategies, optimize the distribution of major productive forces, and provide livelihood service and fundamental guarantees. At the same time, we will step up efforts to ensure the market supply and stable prices of food and strategic energy resources so as to serve the building of the new development paradigm.

Fifth, we will focus on strengthening Party leadership and Party building, and guide and safeguard the high-quality development of enterprises through high-quality Party building. In doing this, we will uphold General Secretary Xi Jinping's important thought on Party building as the overarching principle, take the rectification of problems identified in inspections as an opportunity, focus on ensuring the fulfillment of political responsibility for governance over the Party, and give priority to improving the systems for exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance. We will lay more emphasis on addressing inadequacies and shoring up weak points, on promoting standardization and institutionalization, and on giving better play to the role of Party building in enterprises. We will strive to combine strengthening Party leadership with improving corporate governance, and advance in-depth integration between Party building and corporate production and operation, to provide fundamental guarantees for high-quality development of enterprises and effectively translate the political strengths of Party building into innovation, development and competitive strengths of enterprises.

In general, we will keep to our mission in advancing the cause of the Party and the country, and resolutely play a strategic role in serving the building of a great modern socialist country in all respects, a leading role in driving the upgrading of the industrial system, and a supporting role in promoting China’s economic and social development. Thank you.