In an opinion piece in the official People’s Daily on Thursday, Renmin University professor Zhou Xincheng attacked suggestions that state-owned enterprises should be privatized, calling on the authorities to make SOEs “bigger and stronger.” According to the South China Morning Post, its publication amid a broader debate on “supply-side” economic reforms highlights the administration’s predicament about state firms – Beijing wants the massive enterprises to be more profitable but is unwilling to loosen its grip on them. Sheng Hong, a researcher with Beijing-based independent think tank Unirule Institute of Economics, said the re-emergence of anti-privatisation voices showed there was a “strong resistance to real reforms.”
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