A question of ownership

In 1994, on my first visit to Beijing, I asked a vice-minister in one of the planning agencies what was the hardest aspect of enterprise restructuring. "Finding the owner," he said. This is a deep saying. It applies to everything that is going on in Asia today. It encapsulates the discoveries east and west are on the brink of making from their current encounter.

Consider the classic Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). It makes something, though maybe not too well. It has too many employees, some of whom are highly talented. It provides them with housing and medical care. It pays minimal taxes but buys power from the local grid at an inflated price. It has dozens of affiliates, from which it obtains supplies and through which it distributes product. The ownership of some of these is murky. There is a subsidiary in Hong Kong, but no-one can tell you how...