Giant China Poly Group subsumes two other SOEs

Military giant Poly Group is taking over two state-owned trading companies of light industrial products, helping the Chinese government reach its goal for the year early and slim down the number of SOEs to 99. The two companies – Sinolight and China National Arts & Crafts (Group) – have been completely transferred to Poly Group, without financial transactions, the government supervisor over SOEs said Tuesday. Sprawling Poly Group businesses include defense manufacturing, real estate, cinemas, film distribution and art auctioning. The country started 2017 with 102 state-owned enterprises, and aimed to consolidate as part of its push to improve their efficiency and competitiveness. The government wanted to reduce SOEs to fewer than 100 by the end of this year, Caixin learned from an internal meeting of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council in June. Since 2008, China has worked to consolidate SOEs, which that year stood at 150.