Chinese Industrial Firms Under Reform

Reforms transformed the operating environment, financial arrangements, business and administrative relationships, and internal structure and motivation of Chinese state-owned industrial enterprises during the 1980s. This book, based on a collaborative research project between the World Bank and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyses these changes and their impact on enterprise behaviour and performance from the perspective of individual firms, through a series of detailed case studies. Themes emerging from this study include: the importance of market conditions in influencing enterprise actions; mandatory production planning as a serious obstacle to reforms and efficiency improvements; administrative influence over the permissable scope of enterprise activities and resulting problems; and the role of workers' interests in forming enterprise objectives.