Corporate governance or governance by corporates? Testing governmentality in the context of China's national oil and petrochemical business groups

Abstract

Like other industrial sectors with significant – ‘pillar’ – importance in China's overall economy and development, oil and petrochemicals are governed by state-owned business groups. In this context, ‘corporate governance’ of these groups is of fundamental interest. This study probes corporate governance of 31 national oil and petrochemical business groups by examining their structure, development and business activities in the period from 2007 to 2011. The post-1998 restructuring of China's qiyejituan business groups, their related party transactions and related party corporate finance all yield insight into how property rights are decisive in how corporate governance based on governmentality – or the interrelation of corporate, state and social relations – is structured. This study sheds light on how China's big business policy and governance of the state-business interface progresses in a socialist market economy. It has clear implications international trade and investment as well as multinational corporations doing business with China.

Keywords::

• business groups
• China
• corporate governance
• energy
• oil

Notes

^1. The websites that maintain their individual petroleum or petrochemical ‘concept boards’ (gainianbankuai) are finance.sina.com.cn, quote.eastmoney.com and www.emoney.cn, respectively. Sites were accessed in November and December, 2012.

^2. This was the first time any Hong Kong-listed company was ‘privatized’.

^3. The Economist author notes that the stock market price of the newly listed Sinopec Limited was subsequently prominently displayed in the lobby of the Sinopec headquarters building in Beijing. The parallel with the idolatry and adulation given to Mao portraits and tchotchkes only two dozen years previous is uncanny.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tyler M. Rooker

Tyler M. Rooker (Ph.D., University of California) is Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and has Postdoctoral status at the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology at Peking University. He has worked in both business and academic circles on China-related issues.