Legalising State Capitalism: Reconfiguring SOE Governance in China

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

How should China’s contemporary State-owned enterprise (SOE) governance reforms be understood: as the politicisation of corporate governance, or as a deeper transformation in State Capitalism? This article addresses this question by shifting attention from policy discourse to the emerging legislative architecture of SOE governance under Xi Jinping. Drawing on doctrinal analysis and case studies of reform implementation, it shows that recent reforms have restructured external governance through delegated State-owned capital management and ownership-mediated governance centred on State-owned Capital Investment and Operation Companies, while recasting internal governance through a dual legislative track combining Company Law and Party rules. It argues that these developments constitute the legal construction of a hybrid governance order in which Party leadership and corporate governance are institutionally differentiated yet coordinated.