Unpacking the patterns of corporate restructuring during China’s SOE reform

Xiaojun Li and Jean C. Oi

Economic and Political Studies, 2018, vol. 6, issue 2, 118-134

Abstract: State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China have undergone significant restructuring since the mid-1990s. To date, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the constraints upon and motives for corporate restructuring in China. Yet the majority of the existing studies treat restructuring as a simple ownership transfer from the state to non-state entities without considering the resulting ownership structure of the firm. Consequently, we know relatively little about why otherwise similar SOEs were restructured at different times and through different means. This study intends to fill this gap by examining the determinants of both the timing and the methods of restructuring in a unique longitudinal survey of 145 SOEs over an 11-year period. Using a competing-risks model, we demonstrate that political as well as economic factors determine the possibility, nature and speed of restructuring. In particular, we show that political constraints on employee retention increase the likelihood that a SOE will be restructured as shareholding as opposed to its ownership being directly transferred to private hands. These findings shed new light on the economic and political logic of corporate restructuring in China.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20954816.2018.1463459 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:repsxx:v:6:y:2018:i:2:p:118-134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/reps20

DOI: 10.1080/20954816.2018.1463459

Access Statistics for this article

Economic and Political Studies is currently edited by Qing He and Cunna Li

More articles in Economic and Political Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().