 Riding out the Storm: How State-Owned Enterprises in China Fought the COVID CrisisHao Qi, Zhongjin Li and Ningzhi He Review of Radical Political Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 1, 109-128 Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted economic and social activities worldwide, exposing and exacerbating inherent flaws in the capitalist system. The pandemic’s devastating impact highlights the need for the state and its institutional agencies to actively intervene in public health crises and mitigate the economic damage they cause. This article situates the effectiveness and contribution of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the context of the COVID crisis in China. It first examines how SOEs successfully mobilized their productive capacity at the beginning of the pandemic. Using empirical evidence from publicly listed companies, we then demonstrate how SOEs engaged in countercyclical investment when private investment collapsed. The evidence suggests that SOEs served as a crucial instrument in strengthening social and economic stability, which helped China ride out the COVID storm. We conclude that SOEs are vital for achieving stable social and economic performance in a neoliberal global economy. JEL Classification: E11, O47, P31 Keywords: state-owned enterprises (SOEs); the COVID pandemic; social structure of accumulation (SSA); the Chinese economy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:57:y:2025:i:1:p:109-128 DOI: 10.1177/04866134241284656 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Review of Radical Political Economics from Union for Radical Political Economics |
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