ABSTRACT
The biggest problem is the nomination of senior managers of the holding groups by the government. There should be a promotion mechanism rather than the present practice of a red-letter headed [official] document. I like the private dot.com companies. They change CEO very frequently, and there are many debates in the newspapers over who will be the new CEO. This shows the dot.com companies have a transparent system. However, with stateowned enterprises, the municipal Party’s Personnel Department will nominate the CEO. If a nomination is good, then the enterprise is lucky. If they make a bad decision, then the state enterprise will suffer. Although the Personnel Department also have some rules, for example, they will follow the mass line, talking to people, investigating and observing a cadre for a period, there is not a system, nor a standard. For example, in the past the nominee should not have participated in the 1989 demonstrations, now the nominee should be good at working for both spiritual civilisation and material civilisation. But these are very vague and ever changing. Also, those people who make the nomination do not carry any responsibilities if things go wrong. The small and medium companies do not suffer as much as we do, because the government largely leaves them alone, so they have now started to build up promotion mechanisms such as competition within the company or advertising publicly. For big businesses, the central government has a Big Business Office which nominates the CEO. And the cadres of the Big Business Office are nominated by the Party’s Central Personnel Department. Most of the people in that department do not understand business.
