| Summary/Abstract |
State-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms have typically been considered the result of bargaining under China’s fragmented bureaucratic structure. This study uses the case of the CNR–CSR merger to investigate the latent changes that have recently occurred in the policy-making structure of SOE reforms. This study will demonstrate that ‘top-level design’—in the context of a strengthened political authority and centralised political power—dominates SOE reforms and changes the pattern of fragmented interest bargaining among government departments and SOEs. In this context, the national strategy can be implemented with little resistance, contradicting scholarly predictions of fragmented authoritarianism. However, the top-level design does not appear to be based on a rational decision-making process; rather, its goals are vague, and the methods for achieving them have not been debated rationally. The policy-making process in this case study involved figuring out the top-level leaders’ intentions and rationalising the decisions afterwards. A top-level design with weak rationality may have risky consequences.
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