NORTHERN China's Heilongjiang province has launched a two-year programme to privatise nearly 3,000 small state-owned industrial enterprises as part of efforts to rejuvenate the ageing industrial base.
Yang Weiling, vice-director of the Heilongjiang Commission for Restructuring the Economic System, said the provincial government had decided to carry out major reform.
This bold move will result in a change of ownership of 2,942 small industrial enterprises in the province.
Heilongjiang has been China's traditional heavy industrial base for decades, but the state-owned sector has become a burden for the northern province in the past decade.
Reform in large enterprises has been slow because many are directly controlled by central government ministries.
In additional, many large concerns are in sensitive industries, making it difficult for the provincial government to take any initiative to improve performance.
As a result, Heilongjiang has opted to first tackle small enterprises run by the the local authorities.
