Zheng Rongde has the fortune he tried to seek 21 years ago when he
left his hometown for the bustling city of Shanghai with only 300
yuan (US$36).
The 42-year-old businessman now holds one third of the shares of
Huadong Electrical Appliance Group worth nearly 800 million yuan
(US$96 million).
The group he founded holds shares in 19 enterprises in Shanghai and
Beijing and a number are state-owned. His six fellow shareholders
are all from the private sector.
The new economy with different types of ownership has taken root in
China. At the just concluded forum on the diverse economy held in
Shanghai, respected Chinese economist Xiao Zhuoji predicted that
the "mixed economy" would probably soon become the driving force of
China's fast growing economy.
Zheng Rongde has witnessed and experienced the ups and downs of the
private economy in China during the last two decades. He had been
dreaming of having the same advantages as the rival state-owned
enterprises.
His concerns were addressed at the 16th National Congress of
Communist Party of China (CPC) in last November which backed the
development of a mixed economy and a reduction in state-owned
investments.
The work report delivered at the congress said that joint stock
systems should be actively promoted except for a few sectors that
must be operated by state-owned capital.
"It's the prime time for private enterprises," Zheng said, adding
that his group would consider absorbing state-owned and foreign
investment.
Xiao, also a professor at the prestigious Peking University,
said the booming non-public sector, including foreign-invested
firms, provided a strong base for the burgeoning mixed economy.
The total assets of the domestic private economy had exceeded the
net assets of the state-owned sector, he said.
By
June 2002, there were 2.2152 million private enterprises with
registered capital of 2.1 trillion yuan (US$253 billion). The two
figures in 1978 were both zero.
Fan Gang, another leading Chinese economist, maintained the
development of a mixed economy meant that the reform of state-owned
enterprises had radically changed ownership patterns.
Fan said that after 13 years of reform, a lot of state-owned
enterprises still failed to profit.
The vitality of the mixed economy was widely recognized as the
method to revitalize state-owned sectors, he said.
In
China's economic powerhouse, Shanghai, the fixed asset investment
of the state-owned economy from 1993 to 2001 rose by an annual
average of 7.73 percent, while the figure for the mixed economy was
43.21 percent.
As
every region across China plans to promote the mixed economy after
the historic CPC congress, Shanghai wants to take the lead as it
has done previously. Sources with the municipal government said
thousands of millions of state-owned assets would be cut from some
sectors and transferred into state-held capital.
(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2003)