China unveils inaugural list of most innovative central SOEs

BEIJING - China's top state assets regulator released the inaugural list of centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) leading in science and technology innovation on Wednesday.

The State Council's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) honored 26 SOEs on the 2023 list, including China Mobile, China National Nuclear Corporation, and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd.

These 26 companies mainly come from the energy, communications and aerospace industries.

China Mobile, one of the country's top three telecom operators, has kept boosting investment in frontier sectors. Last year, the telecom giant spent about 28.7 billion yuan ($4 billion) in research and development (R&D), surging almost 60 percent year-on-year, according to its financial report.

At a recent seminar for central SOE executives, the state assets regulator urged efforts to accelerate establishing a comprehensive sci-tech innovation assessment system and nurture new growth drivers.

Last month, central SOEs established 17 new innovation consortiums, covering areas such as industrial software, computing power networks, new energy and advanced materials.

Data from the SASAC showed that the move has brought the total number of central SOE innovation consortiums to 24.

China's central SOEs possess robust innovation capabilities and organizational advantages, positioning them as the core drivers of technological ingenuity. Among the 2023 Fortune 500 companies, 46 were central SOEs from China.

In 2022 and 2023, these SOEs invested over 1 trillion yuan in R&D, achieving breakthroughs in key technologies across various industries and sectors.

China has been ramping up efforts to boost the innovation prowess of SOEs. According to a key policy document unveiled last week, China will allow more eligible SOEs to provide diverse medium and long-term incentives to encourage innovation and creativity among their research personnel.

The institutional framework under which SOEs pursue original innovation will be improved, and the reform of state capital investment and operation companies will be continued.

Zhang Yuzhuo, chairman of the SASAC, said this week that the regulator will provide more institutional support for new areas and new arenas of innovation.

Efforts should be made to promote the integration of central SOEs into the national innovation system and establish a reserve system for enterprise R&D to encourage full-chain innovation from fundamental research to industrial applications, according to Zhang.