State-owned enterprises (SOE’s) and the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) have been getting a lot of bad press [2] recently. Rather than solve the underlying problems causing the bad news, the China Media Project (CMP), a project affiliated with Hong Kong University that specializes in following trends in the Chinese media, has recently reported [3]how SASAC has “encouraged state-owned enterprises to set up press offices to combat “negative news””.  As CLB has previously reported [4], SASAC’s is one of the primary players in the deciding how to restructure SOE’s, and its role is often controversial and troubled, as in the Tonghua incident. Although this new attempt to control information and to “channel public opinion [5]” is somewhat distressing and may eventually prove ineffective, it may also be one of the only recourses available to troubled enterprises, barring a systematic solution to SOE management that includes worker empowerment.

SASAC, a quasi-governmental body under the state council charged with protecting state assets such as SOEs, is responsible for maximizing assets’ market value during transactions with private investors, and in theory at least, SASAC is supposed to represent the overall interests of SOEs, including their employees. In practice, however, this rarely, if ever, happens. As the prominent scholar Yu Jianrong and others have pointed out, SASAC’s ability to protect worker’s rights is problematic because SASAC doesn’t really have the duty, expertise, and personnel to do so.

Since there isn’t a proper tripartite mechanism for allowing capital, workers’ representatives and the government to come to a reasonable and acceptable solution in SOE restructuring cases, it’s understandable that SASAC role remains problematic. Institutionally speaking, since SASAC can’t solve all of the problems related to SOE restructuring alone but since they’re still charged with carrying out a certain aspect of it (maximizing SOE viability and improving asset worth), it’s no wonder that they’re attempting to get better at PR, spin doctoring, and are treating rationale outcries of public opinion in line with what the CMP calls “Control 2.0”, that is, treating “real crises of public interest as public relations challenges”. Until an enterprise-based collective bargaining system is allowed to operate in order to give workers a forceful place to advance their legitimate interests, getting good at putting out forest fires of public opinion may be SASAC’s only good option.

(Also, in the comments section of the CMP post [3], David Bandurski gives an interesting re-cap of the methods and strategies in which the government has attempted to control the domestic press in the last few years).