Study On The Theory Of China's State-owned Capital Efficiency

The issue of state-owned capital efficiency is a problem that is controversial for a long time in theory and practice and is pressing for solution. But until now, few people have made a study of the problem of state-owned capital efficiency systematically at home and abroad, the relevant but nonsystematic domestic research findings mainly concentrate on the problem of the efficiency of state-owned enterprises. The state-owned capital is the economic foundation of our socialist public ownership, whose efficiency influences our entire economic strength directly. So studying the problem of state-owned capital efficiency and analyzing the factors affecting and constraining it in theory and practical have great theoretical and practical meanings to promote the improvement of our state-owned capital efficiency and the enhancement of our economic strength. The western economic theory relying mainly on keynesianism considers that any contradiction in capitalistic economic activity is caused by market failure, and the theory proposes that we should solve market failure by the governmental intervention in the economy. But one important part of the governmental intervention in the economy is that the government makes direct investment and establishes state-owned enterprises, and these form state-owned capital. The state-owned capital is a particular kind of capital form. As a kind of capital, it should have the common quality of capital, which is continuous increment. Furthermore the state-owned capital should have its special quality. The specificity emphasizes that the state-owned capital is the capital managed by the government and the government is the main body to represent the public interest, therefore, the movement of the state-owned capital has to work for the policy objectives that the government set up for the public interest. So the state-owned capital should have double functions, one is increment, and the other is service. Between them, the increment takes the premier place, only the state-owned capital adds its value continuously, its service function can be guaranteed effectively, or it would have no meaning. In the view of the general regulation of capital, the ultimate purpose of capital operation is to seek for the increment of value. Therefore the primary criterion to evaluate whether the operation of capital is effective is to see the number of the profit rate. But the criterion of profit rate is not an absolute standard to evaluate the capital efficiency, but a relative one. In practical economic research, we must evaluate the capital efficiency combining with the social welfare requirements. Though the summarization and analysis of the research methods of capital efficiency between Marxian economic theory and western capital theory, this thesis uses the Pareto Efficiency as a basic criterion to measure the capital efficiency and the state-owned capital efficiency. The efficiency of state-owned capital is the operational efficiency of state-owned capital. The operation of state-owned capital is the process in which the provider of state-owned capital allocates and uses the state-owned capital. Because the state-owned capital has duality, its operation also is dualistic. That is to say, the operation of state-owned capital not only has the general operational feature of capital, which is taking the profit maximum as the primary objective, but also is of sociality and commonality, which aim at social welfare maximum. As the management of state-owned capital has features as multiple purposefulness, the coexistence of macro managementand micro management, the combination of social benefit and economic benefit and so on, these have determined the complexity of the management cost and the synthesis of the management profit, which then also bring complexity to the study of state-owned capital efficiency. However we should not only investigate the micro efficiency of state-owned capital, but also observe its macro efficiency, and likewise we should assess both its economic and social efficiency. The efficiency of state-owned capital depends on multitude factors. The first one is the scale of the economy. Only controlling the scale of the economy in a certain extent, the economy of scale can be formed, and the production is effective at this moment. In the light of the economy of scale, neither too large scale of state-owned capital nor too small one is economic, only the state-owned capital in a suitable scale can be effective. Meanwhile, when the government determines the scale of state-owned capital, it should consider the maximum of the social welfare first of all. Secondly, the efficiency of state-owned capital lies on the industry structure and the region structure of the allocation of state-owned capital. Under mature market economy circumstances, the main function of state-owned capital is to make up the market failure. Therefore its existent industry border should be natural monopoly industries, the projects to optimize the economic structure and adjust the total economic amount, the external economic projects, public products, some new technical departments and so on. In the same time, in the above industries the state-owned capital should have certain degree of industrial concentration to meet the requirements of the economy of scale. In the regional allocation of state-owned capital, we should follow the principle of efficiency and equity and consider the regional comparative advantages fully as well as support the less economic developing area with variouseffective policies. Thirdly, in the institutional way we think the most basic factor influencing the state-owned capital efficiency is property relations. As the property relations influence of state-owned enterprises, they do not only act on the proprietary rights; but also the power structure made of proprietary rights, control rights, management rights, and usufruct rights and the balance interrelationships between them, and then the motivation mechanism and restriction mechanism coordinating the structure and the interrelationships; all of the three have great influence on capital efficiency of the state-owned enterprises. Furthermore, the differences of the corporate governance structure and the enterprise capital structure caused by the differences of the property rights, which to a great extent influence the capital efficiency of the state-owned enterprises. Therefore the key point of the reforming of state-owned enterprises is to build clearly established ownership, which is to depart the proprietary rights from the management rights and to symmetrically distribute the surplus charge rights and the surplus control rights. Chinese state-owned capital is based on confiscation of bureaucrat capital and taking over the enterprises and fortune of imperialism, and then on the ground built centralized management of the whole state-owned capital. In the traditional state-owned capital management system, because of the theory confusion of state-owned and state-managed, we built a management system unifying proprietary rights and management right, which means unifying executive power and management rights, and this kind management system seriously restricts the operation efficiency of state-owned capital. The results of real example analysis show that, the operation of our state-owned capital, both macroscopic aspect and microscopic field behaves low-efficiency situation. And it has the following behaviors: the overallearning level of state-owned capital is low and the loss situation in state-owned enterprises is still exit; the industry centralization degree of state-owned capital is somewhat not enough, the allocation is unreasonable and the economy of scale is not visible; the regional economic development of state-owned capital is imbalance. What above mentioned seriously constrict the improvement of our state-owned economic strength and the promotion of Chinese state-owned enterprises competition. Since 1970s, the phenomenon of low economical efficiency of state-owned enterprises and capital universally happened in western developed countries; hence the western countries went for a monstrous tidal wave of reforming state-owned enterprises, and the principle reforming models included privatization, state-owned privatization, and state-owned corporatization. In those reform ways mentioned above, privatization was a popular way of reforming, but we do not think it fits for China right now. The ultimate objective of state-owned enterprises reforming is to raise economical efficiency, so any way to fulfill it we can choose and it is not necessary to take privatization. To improve the operation efficiency of state-owned capital, we must further deepen state-owned enterprises reforming and also the state-owned capital management system reforming. There are some difficult issues coming to the surface in the process of state-owned enterprises reforming and also some basic problems in the operation of our state-owned capital; such as the problem that sponsors of state-owned capital should be in the right position is not basically solved; the proprietary rights of state-owned capital is not totally departed from the management rights; the boundary between the central authority and the local state-owned capital management authority is fuzzy; effective state-owned capital supervisor system lacks; the low...