[Photo by Liu Zhihua/chinadaily.com.cn]

The past three decades has witnessed China’s rapid economic development, and State-owned enterprises have been growing since the start of the reform and opening-up.

Huazhang Book Academy, a Beijing-based book club, and Zhisland, a club and social platform for top entrepreneurs, are jointly offering a book to readers who want to know more about China’s internationally recognized State-owned enterprises and their top leaders.

The book, titled Reformers within State-owned Enterprises and published by China Machine Press earlier this month, is a collection of interviews and life stories of five top entrepreneurs in five influential State-owned enterprises.

"China’s fast development in the past decades relied on numerous entrepreneurs. I’ve always wanted to record their effort and achievements, especially those working in the State-owned system," says Liu Donghua, founder and CEO of Zhisland.

"Leaders of State-owned companies need to be sensitive enough both to the market and the politics, if they want to successfully lead reforms within the State-owned system, which requires great techniques, vision, will and strategy." The book has five chapters.

Each chapter tells the life stories and reform initiatives of the five entrepreneurs in a chronological order.

The five entrepreneurs are Qin Xiao, former chairman of China Merchants Group, Song Zhiping, president of China National Building Material Corp, Ning Gaoning, chairman of the China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corp, Ma Weihua, former president of China Merchants Bank, and Gao Xiqing, former general manager of the China Investment Corp.

It also analyzes the dynamics behind the success of each entrepreneur, and in most cases, ends with a documentation of the exclusive interviews on topics related to the entrepreneur’s work, such as financial reform.

Su Xiaohe, an established business journalist who conducted most of the interviews with the entrepreneurs, is the book’s writer.

Both Liu and Su credit the book to direction from Wu Jianmin, the former Chinese ambassador to France. Wu, also executive vice-chairman of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, a think tank, initiated the project with Zhisland.