China's State-owned and State-controlled enterprises demonstrated generally stable performance in the first 11 months of 2025, with revenues registering slight growth while profits experienced a modest year-on-year decline.

According to official data released earlier this week, these enterprises collectively generated operating revenues totaling 75.63 trillion yuan ($10.8 trillion) during the January-November period, reflecting a 1 percent year-on-year increase, according to data from the Ministry of Finance. Total profits for the same period amounted to nearly 3.72 trillion yuan, marking a 3.1 percent year-on-year decrease.

Meanwhile, taxes and fees payable by SOEs edged up 0.2 percent year-on-year to approximately 5.28 trillion yuan.

Officials and experts noted that the data points to a pattern of low growth and weak profitability among SOEs. As an integral force in serving national strategies, SOEs play a vital role in stabilizing the economy, strengthening and supplementing industrial chains, and advancing scientific and technological self-reliance.

In this context, they said that the high-quality development and transformation of SOEs should be assessed beyond short-term financial metrics. Zhang Yuzhuo, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, said the new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation is rapidly reshaping the global economic landscape, with innovation paradigms undergoing profound shifts and industrial iteration cycles significantly shortening — putting central SOEs at risk of marginalization or even gradual elimination unless they accelerate transformation.

In an article on Monday in Study Times, a newspaper administered by the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhang stressed the need to uphold reform and innovation, address deep-seated constraints on corporate development, and achieve transformations in quality, efficiency and growth drivers.

He emphasized SOEs' resolve to proactively plan and implement major projects and landmark initiatives to fully unlock the country's economic growth potential.

Despite a slight decrease in profits, the role of SOEs in strategic sectors tied to national security cannot be ignored, said Li Xuenan, a professor of finance and director of the China Industrial Policy Research Center at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

"Facing complex geopolitics, for key sectors vital to the national economy and people's livelihood — such as core supply chains — where China remains at a disadvantage and lacks comparative advantages, relying on international trade or pure market selection would be tantamount to handing our lifeline to others," she said.

At the early stages of these industries, given technological backwardness and uncertain returns, private capital often hesitates to enter. In such circumstances, she added, State capital must act as patient capital, taking the lead through strategic investment to fill gaps and build a robust ecosystem.

The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period witnessed a historic leap in the scale and strength of central State-owned enterprises and the sustained release of reform-driven momentum. Over the past five years, total assets of central SOEs grew from under 70 trillion yuan to over 90 trillion yuan, cumulative R&D investment exceeded 5 trillion yuan; while investment in emerging industries recorded an average annual growth rate of more than 20 percent; through strategic restructuring and new formations, their vitality and dynamism were further invigorated.

According to Li Zheng, dean of the School of Economics at Liaoning University, during the past five years, SOEs strengthened their innovation capabilities, becoming trailblazers in tackling "bottleneck" technologies and key core technologies, leaders in green development, and guardians of both security and growth.

Data from the SASAC showed that SOEs have actively undertaken major national science and technology missions in the past five years, taking the lead or participating in 22 national major S&T projects, and accounting for 60 percent of the R&D of landmark products under the action plan for high-quality development of key manufacturing industry chains.

Meanwhile, they are also accelerating the establishment of sources of original technologies, having laid out 97 such hubs in fields including quantum computing and biotechnology, and have achieved a number of breakthroughs.

SOEs still need to improve innovation incentive mechanisms and bolster original innovation, while promoting deep integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial innovation, and of the digital economy with the real economy, Li added.

renqi@chinadaily.com.cn