ABSTRACT
In the course of fifty years from 1949 to 1998, the institutional structure of China’s
oil and petrochemical industry experienced significant change (Table 4.1).
Throughout the period of the command economy from the 1950s to 1970s, the
Ministry of Petroleum was the ‘commander’ of the oil and petrochemical
industry. It planned, organised, and administered the activities of the whole
industry in the fashion of a military campaign. During the 1980s and 1990s, a
series of significant experiments was carried out to transform the industry from
government ministries to business corporations. In 1981, the oil industry became
the country’s first industrial sector to adopt the contract system across the whole
industry (hangye baogan). The Ministry of Petroleum industry and the chemical
industry were successively ‘corporatised’ into companies. The effort to construct
large modern industrial corporations culminated in the nation-wide restructuring
programme of 1998 and the subsequent flotation of the industry’s core assets in
the year 2000.
