The 3rd meeting of China’s Central Committee for Comprehensively Deepening Reform of the Chinese Communist Party was held on November 7th. Directives from the meeting stressed the importance of “optimizing the layout of state-owned enterprises, strengthening supervision of monopolistic industries, improving the state capital operating budget system, and emphasizing fiscal discipline.” The Committee is chaired by Xi Jinping, who presided over the meeting.
Other dictates resulting from the Committee’s meeting include:
- The state capital operating budget is important and should be improved to expand its scope, strengthen its functions, better manage revenue and spending, and increase fund effectiveness.
- Adhere to Party leadership and fully utilize the [Chinese] system’s advantage of concentrating resources on major initiatives. The goal is to optimize the distribution and structure of state-owned enterprises, concentrating state capital in key national security industries, public services, emerging strategic industries, and improving people’s livelihoods. This will allow state enterprises to better align with national strategies.
- For natural monopoly industries like electric power, oil, gas and rail, regulation should focus on ensuring that those industries fulfill national security duties, social responsibilities, and business scope limits.
The Committee meeting reiterated the principle of “overcapacity reduction” and the idea of “living a tight life” fiscally. It called for strengthening budgetary constraints, promoting performance management, rationalizing revenues and expenditures, improving people’s livelihoods, and ending extravagance and waste.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), November 7, 2023
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202311070369.aspx