After 1949, all business entities in the
People's Republic of China were created and owned by the government. In the late 1980s, the government began to reform the state-owned enterprise, and during the 1990s and 2000s, many mid-sized and small sized state-owned enterprises were privatized and went public. There are a number of different corporate forms which result in a mixture of public and private capital. In PRC terminology, a state-owned enterprise refers to a particular corporate form, which is increasingly being replaced by the
listed company. Some of the largest state-owned enterprises have been floated on the
Shanghai Stock Exchange and the
Shenzhen Stock Exchange, but in actuality, the state maintains total control of these corporations, always holding majority interest and voting rights. State-owned enterprises are mostly governed by both local governments' SASAC and, in the central government,
the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council. However, some state-owned enterprise were governed by
China Investment Corporation (and its domestic arm
Central Huijin Investment), as well as under the governance of
Ministry of Education for the university-run enterprises, or some financial institutes that were under the governance of the
Ministry of Finance. As of 2011, 35% of business activity and 43% of profits in the People's Republic of China resulted from companies in which the state owned a majority interest. Critics, such as
The New York Times, have alleged that China's state-owned companies are a vehicle for corruption by the families of ruling party leaders who have sometimes amassed fortunes while managing them. China had more than 350 individual entries in the
Government-owned companies of China category page.
Hong Kong In the postwar years, Hong Kong's colonial government operated under a laissez-faire economic philosophy called
positive non-interventionism. Hence Crown corporations did not play as significant a role in the development of the territory as in many other British territories. The
MTR Corporation (MTR) was formed as a Crown corporation, mandated to operate under "prudent commercial principles", in 1975. The
Kowloon-Canton Railway, operated under a government department, was corporatised in 1982 to imitate the success of MTR (see
Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation). MTR was privatised in 2000 although the Hong Kong Government is still the majority shareholder. KCR was operationally merged with MTR in 2007. Examples of present-day statutory bodies include the
Airport Authority, responsible for running the
Hong Kong International Airport, or the
Housing Authority, which provides housing to about half of Hong Kong residents. == Colombia ==