8 SOEs reform

In May, China's Cabinet released a guideline to clarify relations between investors, the board of directors, managers and the board of supervisors at State firms, with detailed clarifications of their obligations and responsibilities.

China hopes to boost the efficiency of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), make them operate in accordance with market principles and assume responsibility for their own profits, losses and risks, according to the guideline, which sets a goal of basically completing the reforms by 2017.

On August 16, China Unicom announced its listed arm China United Network Communications Ltd plans to bring in private investment mainly by issuing shares for companies including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, China Life, JD and Suning.

Meng Wei, spokesperson of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China has included another 31 SOEs in the third round of mixed-ownership reform program.