An Empirical Analysis of the Amount of Resources Controlled by the Government

Abstract

In the final analysis, a society's property-rights structure and the framework of its government-enterprises relationship are determined by the amount of resources controlled by and at the disposal of the government. Therefore, restricting the amount of resources controlled by and at the disposal of the government is a precondition for rationalizing and putting in order the relationship between the government and the enterprises. One of the fundamental reasons that, since the inauguration of reform, we in China have so far failed to effectively separate the government from the enterprises and that we are today faced with such difficulty in reorganizing our state-owned economic sector is that the government still controls a tremendous amount of resources. Thus, breaking up the government's control of resources will become a major task of further reform, and it will serve to lay an economic foundation for reforming our political system. Along such a line of thought, this article seeks to provide an empirical analysis of the amount of resources controlled by the government, and to propose a fundamental way to break up the government's control of resources.