Hua Mingzhu, who was laid off from a struggling state-owned feed plant three years ago, made a comeback earlier this month as the owner of the plant.

Hua became the owner of the small feed plant, that lost money, located in Wuxi, a scenic city in Jiangsu Province, east China, after she won the bid for ownership of the plant at an auction organized by the local government on July 12.

She beat other bidders with her bid price of four million yuan (US$480,000).

According to government regulations, Hua, as owner of Wuxi Compound Feed Plant, has to pay the salary and social welfare contributions to 46 laid-off workers in addition to the 48 employees she currently employs.

“I’m going to hire more salespersons and several young people with a college education, and reform the income distribution system so that employees will be better paid for better work,” she said.

Hua used to be in charge of public relations work, worked as a saleswoman for the plant, and was laid off in 1997, along with many others, due to the poor performance of the plant.

Hua later started her own company and worked as a real estate agent. “The business has been quite profitable,” she said.

China has loosened control over the management of medium-sized and small state-owned enterprises (SOE) that are losing money, allowing overseas and domestic investment into most of those firms.

(China Daily 07/21/2001)