Fragmented authoritarianism and state ownership

OVER the past 40 years a truly dynamic private sector has emerged from nothing and now dominates the Chinese world factory of manufacturing exports. but while the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress in 2013 declared the market to play a decisive role in the economy, it also reasserted the dominant position of public ownership. The most visible manifestation of Chinas public ownership is its state-owned enterprises (SoEs). At home they dominate key upstream sectors such as energy, resources, telecommunications, and banking. Abroad, they are the vanguard of Chinese overseas direct investment. but given the oft-reported problems of Chinas state sector, is maintaining public ownership consistent with Chinas aspiration to become a high-income market economy? to answer this, we must be clear on what is meant by state, ownership and enterprise.Chinas political system is often caricatured as a system of red telephones all ultimately connected to the desk of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. but while the general secretary is a powerful man, a more accurate description of Chinas political governance is fragmented authoritarianism. Power and responsibility are delegated downward to provincial and local levels of government, as well as horizontally between state ministries with different, often competing functional responsibilities