BIDING TIME: More than 1,700 ships wait at the Gaoliangjian ship lock in Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, on July 15, as the water level of the Hongze Lake on the lower reaches of the Huaihe River has declined to a historical low (YE SHOUWEI)

SOE Reform

Six large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will pilot reforms in ownership, management and supervision, Chinese authorities announced on July 15.

The companies are the State Development and Investment Corp. (SDIC), China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO), China National Building Materials Group (CNBM), China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group (CECEP), Xinxing Cathay International Group (XXCIG) and China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC).

The SDIC and COFCO will be "reorganized" to establish "state-owned asset investment companies" on a trial basis. Mixed-ownership pilot reforms will be carried out at Sinopharm and CNBM, said SASAC spokesman Peng Huagang at a press conference.

A more effective board of directors system will be set up at XXCIG, CECEP, Sinopharm and CNBM, and disciplinary inspection teams will be sent to another two or three unnamed SOEs, said Peng, who is also in charge of reform issues at the SASAC.

The "state-owned asset investment company" has been designed to make the "state"—the SASAC in this case—a stakeholder instead of a manager of a SOE so as to raise the company's management and operation efficiency.

For mixed-ownership reform, SOE giants like China National Petroleum Corp. and China Telecom have carried out their own plans to diversify corporate ownership and attract private funds.

The new board of directors system is meant to allow the board to act as the company's decision-making center while reducing the management entitlements of investors.

Land Finance

The total land transaction fees collected by local governments in 2013 soared to an all-time high of 3.91 trillion yuan ($630 billion), up 1.2 trillion yuan ($193 billion) from the year earlier period, according to new figures from the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

Transaction fees for the use of state-owned land, an important gauge of local governments' dependence on land finance, reached 4.13 trillion yuan ($666 billion), an increase of 45 percent. MOF said 35 percent of all local revenues were generated by fees associated with the right to use state-owned land.

Official statistics show local governments' land transaction revenues reached 3.1 trillion yuan ($500 billion) in 2011 and dropped to 2.7 trillion yuan ($435 billion) in 2012.

The MOF attributed the soaring revenues to the price increase for land transactions, which was in lockstep with local governments' increased dependence on fiscal income from the selling of land use rights.

Green Push

China unveiled a plan on July 13 that encourages government organs to buy more new-energy vehicles, which has been hailed as an important move in fighting pollution and driving the slowly growing new-energy car market.

From 2014 to 2016, new-energy vehicles will account for no less than 30 percent of newly purchased cars in state organs, according to the plan jointly released by the National Government Offices Administration (NGOA), National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology, and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The plan also applies to government organs and public service institutions in regions where controlling fine particle emissions has become a challenging task in the fight against pollution, an NGOA spokesman said.

The number of new-energy vehicles will account for at least 15 percent of new cars in 2014 for local government departments and institutions in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in north China, the Yangtze River Delta in the east, and the Pearl River Delta in the south.

That percentage will be raised year by year in government organs, public service institutions and organizations that are wholly or partially supported by government funds, according to the spokesman.

To implement the plan, the Central Government promised to offer subsidies for new-energy vehicles priced less than 180,000 yuan ($29,000) and ordered local governments to build more facilities for the use of new-energy vehicles.