On October 20, a provincial meeting to advance the further deepening of state-owned enterprise reform was held in Sichuan. Key provincial leaders attended, along with more than 240 participants including principal responsible persons of relevant state-owned enterprises. This high-level meeting sent a clear signal: to push forward the deepening of state-owned enterprise reform with greater intensity and more concrete measures, enabling state-owned enterprises to better play their roles in technological innovation, industrial control, and security support, and to make new and greater contributions to writing a new chapter in Sichuan's modernization.
The question of why Sichuan needs to further deepen state-owned enterprise reform, and how to advance it, became increasingly clear as the meeting progressed.
Why reform is necessary
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Sichuan's state-owned enterprises successively implemented the "1+6" major special reforms and the "1+8" key area reforms, achieving notable results. So why is there still a need to go deeper? On one hand, it is about implementing the deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council. On June 23 of this year, a national video conference on mobilizing and deploying the further deepening of state-owned enterprise reform was held in Beijing, making comprehensive arrangements and emphasizing the need to focus on core responsibilities and main businesses, unswervingly deepen state-owned enterprise reform, strengthen, optimize, and expand state-owned enterprises and state-owned capital, continuously enhance core functions and improve core competitiveness, and better leverage the leading role of the state-owned economy.
On the other hand, it stems from the actual pain points and difficulties faced by Sichuan's state-owned enterprises in their development. Extending the development timeline reveals that the resilience of a major economic province cannot be separated from the support of state-owned enterprises as a "ballast stone." This is also true for Sichuan. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the province needs to maintain a growth trajectory higher than the national average and consolidate its position in the national economic landscape, which urgently requires state-owned enterprises to make special contributions and play a pillar role.
In recent years, the comprehensive strength of Sichuan's state-owned economy has continued to improve. By the end of 2025, the total assets of state-owned enterprises across the province reached 23.23 trillion yuan, with revenue of 2.42 trillion yuan and profits of 114.1 billion yuan, ranking 5th, 7th, and 3rd in the country respectively. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, provincial-level enterprises completed a cumulative investment of 1.2 trillion yuan, promoting the completion and operation of a large number of major projects such as Tianfu International Airport, the Chengdu-Zigong-Yibin High-Speed Railway, and the Jinsha Hydropower Station, contributing the strength of state-owned enterprises to the province's high-quality economic and social development.
Behind the positive economic momentum, there are also aspects worth considering. Overall, Sichuan's state-owned enterprises are "large but not strong" and "large but not excellent," with problems such as suboptimal industrial layout, low operational quality and efficiency, and insufficient focus on main businesses. Specifically, the research and development investment intensity of Sichuan's provincial-level enterprises is relatively low, below the national average for provincial-level enterprises, and the proportion of technology-based enterprises is relatively small. At the same time, the annualized return on net assets is below the national average, and state-owned enterprises across the province still face 11 types of prominent problems to varying degrees, including idle and wasted assets.
Breaking through these challenges has become key to development. Recently, the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee held a special meeting to study the reform and development of state-owned enterprises and reviewed and approved the "Sichuan Province Implementation Plan for Further Deepening State-Owned Enterprise Reform," continuously strengthening, optimizing, and expanding state-owned enterprises and state-owned capital to provide strong support for Sichuan's high-quality development and modernization.
How to carry out the reform
With reform directions identified in areas such as industrial layout and financial services, how can methodology be transformed into practical pathways? The meeting revealed a key signal: it is necessary to accelerate the optimization and adjustment of layout structure and vigorously improve the development quality and efficiency of state-owned enterprises. Simply put, state-owned enterprises need to focus their energy where it matters most.
First, main responsibilities should be determined based on functional positioning, and main businesses and businesses to be cultivated should be determined based on main responsibilities. It was learned from the Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission that classification management will be further strengthened, and measures for defining and classifying enterprise functions will be formulated and issued. Provincial-level enterprises are planned to be divided into five categories: investment and operation, industrial development, functional support, financial services, and cultural industry. A main responsibility and main business management system will be accelerated, a digital platform for main business management will be built and put into use, dynamic monitoring and evaluation of main businesses will be carried out, and the bottom line of non-main business investment not exceeding 10% will be strictly observed.
Second, the real economy industry should be developed and expanded, and the action to cultivate strategic emerging industries among provincial-level enterprises should be deepened. Emerging pillar industries such as integrated circuits and new electronic components, aerospace, new energy, new materials, and biomedicine should be developed and expanded. Emerging potential industries such as artificial intelligence, robotics, low-altitude economy, and nuclear technology should be accelerated. The goal is for provincial-level enterprises' investment in emerging industries to exceed 20% by 2029, with revenue from the six advantageous industries growing by more than 50%.
Among these, the most important change is in investment in technological innovation. A special action to cultivate specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises will be implemented, introducing measures such as "recognized newly added specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises are not subject to legal entity quantity control" and treating research and development expenses as equivalent to profit added back, cultivating a batch of technology-based and innovative enterprises in a tiered manner. In other words, these measures both remove quantity thresholds for state-owned enterprises to establish innovative entities and allow them to boldly conduct research and development and invest funds in technological innovation.
Inside the venue, many attending enterprise leaders took notes while listening, with thoughts about next steps forming in their minds. "We will highlight technological innovation, cultivate new quality productive forces, and accelerate technological transformation and promotion," said Wang Cheng, Party Secretary and Chairman of Sichuan Energy Development Group. He stated that "three-in-one linkage" modifications will be implemented for existing coal-fired power units — energy-saving and carbon-reduction transformation, heating transformation, and flexibility transformation — promoting the application of new technologies such as supercritical carbon dioxide, organic Rankine cycle, and flexible direct current transmission, continuously reducing energy consumption and improving efficiency. At the same time, research on cutting-edge and disruptive technologies such as controllable nuclear fusion, wireless power transmission, and new energy mass-energy networks will be carried out with appropriate foresight, striving to gain the initiative in future energy competition.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Shudao Group built the Luding Dadu River Bridge on the Ya'an-Kangding Expressway. To further deepen state-owned enterprise reform, Sichuan also needs to improve the quality and efficiency of financial services. It was learned from the Provincial Department of Finance that a "investment-loan-bond-guarantee" linkage mechanism will be established, and technology finance service models such as "fund investment + bank credit + guarantee enhancement" will be improved, providing more patient capital for cultivating new quality productive forces and playing a greater role in serving national and provincial strategies and investing early, in small businesses, and in hard technology.
Chengdu High-Tech Investment Group has already made attempts. According to Zhou Zhi, Party Secretary and Chairman of the company, the enterprise has fully leveraged its role as long-term capital, patient capital, and strategic capital, established tolerance for losses and errors and mandatory co-investment mechanisms, and carried out investments tailored to local conditions. Over the past five years, it has completed cumulative equity investments exceeding 60 billion yuan. In the past three years, investment in new quality productive forces has grown at an average annual rate of 15%, accounting for more than 75% of total investment. It has participated in or held shares in more than 100 listed companies and has already achieved 20 IPO projects this year.
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