136 State-Owned Enterprises in China Experiment with Employee Ownership

According to a December 13 article in the Asia Times, reforms among state-owned enterprises in China aimed at increasing private capital have led 136 Chinese enterprises to experiment with employee ownership plans. The article uses the term "employee stock ownership plan," but such plans in China have in the past been more similar to stock purchase plans, requiring employee purchase and often focused on senior employees and executives. Employee ownership is also common among privatized enterprises previously owned entirely by the local governments, and in some companies that have always been employee-owned, including Huawei, which is entirely owned by two-thirds of its more than 180,000 employees.