ABSTRACT
Introduction China surpassed the USA in 2012 to be the top energy consumer (BP 2013, 40), and a year later became theworld’s number one oil importer (Crooks 2013),making energy security one of the greatest challenges to the Chinese government. By far, Beijing has relied on its major national oil companies (NOCs) to ensure the country’s energy supply, by enhancing domestic oil production and overseas oil exploration. The government has also takenmeasures to boost NOCs’ efficiency and productivity through government reforms and NOCs restructuring, which have allowed the NOCs to be listed at the international stock markets and obtained top ranks worldwide as well. In 2013, the China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) were ranked as the world’s fourth and fifth largest enterprises respectively, followed by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) at 93th (Fortune Global 500 2013). Despite their seemingly impressive potential, however, the Chinese NOCs have faced an identity problem in their development. As internationally listed companies, they are supposed to be business-oriented entities focusing on profitability. However, as the Chinese NOCs enjoymany privileges that are unavailable to private companies (similar to their foreign counterparts), such asmonopoly power in China’s oil market and special influence in China’s political system, the western oil majors have not viewed Chinese NOCs as fair partner for competition. Inside China, the NOCs’ monopoly and ineffectiveness have also encountered severe criticism, and further market reforms were urged by scholars to limit NOCs’ privileges (Sheng 2013).
