Chinese state firm executives frozen out of Central Committee as Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption plan bites
In stark contrast to previous event, company chiefs are excluded from Communist Party’s elite decision-making body in move linked to president’s anti-graft campaign
No executives from state-owned enterprises (SOE) made it to the Chinese Communist Party’s newly elected Central Committee as full members – a dramatic change from 2012 when five top managers of state firms were among more than 200 full members on the party’s elite decision-making body.
Since then, three SOE executives have taken on administrative positions with local governments; one was ousted in the anti-corruption crackdown and another implicated in alleged illegal selling of shares during China’s summer 2015 stock market meltdown.
The paucity of full-member SOE executives on the latest iteration of the Central Committee would appear to be out of sync with party leader Xi Jinping’s aim of making state-owned enterprises bigger and stronger, as stated in his grand economic strategy.
State-firm reform was the centrepiece of an economic plan that achieved mainly disappointing results in Xi’s first five-year term.
Political commentator Chen Daoyin said the committee’s lack of top SOE managers reflected how Beijing’s high-profile curbs on corruption and the work of the party’s anti-graft agency have deeply infiltrated the processes for electing party congress delegates and full and alternate members.