Share-Issue Privatization in China: 2002-2008

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of China’s incremental approach to denationalization, share-issue privatization, wherein the government sells shares of state-owned enterprises to the public, while retaining an ownership position in the firm. The effectiveness of this approach to denationalization will be evaluated based on four widely-used measures of firm well-being and productivity--returns on assets, returns on sales, sales per employee, and profits per employee, based on data retrieved from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR) Database and the Private Listed Companies Database.