-
China's economy is 40% state-owned – compare Lenin's NEP period, 70-77%
-
Soviet state-owned enterprises were designed to make a thing (like the water service, like the post office). Chinese state-owned enterprises are different: they are profit-making players in the market.
-
China has enterprises owned by local and provincial government – sometimes they compete with each other! So the state competes with itself on the market!
-
They can sell 49% of their stock on the stock market, even to foreigners.
-
The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) is an institution directly under the management of the State Council. It is an ad-hoc ministerial-level organization directly subordinated to the State Council – http://en.sasac.gov.cn/sasacaboutus.html – It's like the Chinese statist Berkshire Hathaway. In theory, it can control a company as much as a shareholder can.
-
Li-Wen Lin & Curtis J Milhaupt write about Chinese corporate structure. They say when direct state industries (like post offices or Soviet bureaux) turned into profit-seeking state-owned things and essentially bought the party off, made it rich.
I was listening to the occasional episode that seemed interesting for a while after I decided he was basically a radlib, then at the outset of the Ukraine war he did an episode with some guy where the first thirty minutes were just two liberals going "Sure, you might see some Nazi imagery on Ukrainian soldiers but hey, you can probably see that in any European military I am guessing right now without checking and have no intention to check! It's like, Russian misinformation to say that a lot of Ukrainian troops are Nazis, you have to understand the culture to get the nuance, Totenkopfs are just their form of trolling or whatever" and I couldn't take him seriously any more.