ABSTRACT
A critical step of market-driven reforms in China was to restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Since the Chinese government’s decision to launch a dramatic restructuring effort in the 1990s, a majority of small and medium enterprises in the public sector have been closed, allowed to go bankrupt, or sold to private entrepreneurs. More than 50 million workers from the public sector were laid off between 1993 and 2003. No wonder the restructuring is described by some scholars as the “big bang” of economic reforms in China (Naughton 2007; Zweig 2010).
