It is urgent to fight corruption in SOEs

Absolute power without effective supervision and accountability for leaders of State-owned enterprises is an invitation to absolute corruption. This has been proved by the findings of discipline inspection teams after their investigations of several giant SOEs.

Some SOE leaders paid for mergers and acquisitions in violation of the rules, some deliberately let their private counterparts make huge profits at the expense of their own companies, and some subcontracted their businesses to their own private companies or those owned by their relatives at prices even lower than cost. It is not rare for SOE employees to channel public funds into private firms by whatever means they can for their own gains.

There has long been gossip about the corruption of some SOE leaders, and what the investigation teams have discovered more than proves the truth of the chatter.