'Letting Go of the Small': An Analysis of the Privatisation of Rural Enterprises in Jiangsu and Shandong
基于江苏和山东三县的访谈与调查数据，分析1996年“抓大放小”政策后乡镇企业私有化的过程与影响，揭示快速私有化如何防止资产流失、效率目标如何要求经理持多数股，以及私有化如何更有利于乡镇政府和经理而非工人。
Since the policy of "grasping the large, letting go of the small" was initiated in 1996, there has been a program of mass privatisation of China's rural industrial enterprises. This paper, based on interviews and survey data from three counties in Jiangsu and Shandong, analyses the process of privatisation and examines its impacts. Our analysis, which incorporates both choice theoretic and power theoretic considerations, shows how rapid privatisation was driven by the desire to prevent further asset stripping, how 'efficiency' objectives were seen as requiring majority share ownership by enterprise managers, and how the privatisation process better served the interests of some agents (most notably, township governments and enterpise managers) than others (most notably, workers).