No more sales: Exposing the myth of corporate restructuring

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Features: The term "sale" is used to plunder people's property. On the surface, most state-owned enterprise equity reforms have adopted the practice of selling the ownership of state-owned enterprises. Many people believe that this transfer of enterprise ownership is not the plundering of the masses by a few, as it is merely a "transaction." However, in reality, it is not difficult for a few to plunder the majority under the guise of a "transaction." Whether a transaction becomes plunder depends on the price: if one party is forced to sell its property to another for only 1/10 of its value, there is no doubt that this "transaction" is a form of plunder. The sale of public enterprise ownership is no different from the sale of any other enterprise ownership, and one of the biggest issues is the actual value of an enterprise's ownership. According to common practice, under the current "capital employs labor" corporate system, the value of any enterprise's ownership should be the value of its capital. From the perspective of corporate accounting, the amount of capital is quite clear—it is the difference between a company's total assets and liabilities on its balance sheet. However, as different economics professors with differing views, such as Zhang Weiyi and Hu Jingbei, all emphasize, the common knowledge of mainstream economics is that the book value of assets is not an accurate measure of a company's actual assets. The actual measure of a company's assets can only be the capitalization of its total future profits. Yet achieving such a correct measure in practice is difficult, and even more so, there is no consistent and widely recognized method of measurement. Precisely because the actual value of enterprise assets and thus its capital is hard to measure accurately, it becomes possible to drastically undervalue the sale price of enterprise ownership. This approach to "selling" the ownership of public enterprises allows buyers to become extremely wealthy. The latter part of this chapter will elaborate in detail that in recent years' public enterprise "reforms," the book value of a company's assets may not be equal to its actual assets, becoming the main basis for a few to "purchase" the ownership of enterprises without adhering to the book value of public net assets. They use this as a pretext to employ every possible means to drive the sale price of public enterprises far below their actual value. There, it will be fully explained what specific methods they have adopted. Among these methods, the most egregious are various illegal and unethical practices, ranging from falsifying accounts and concealing assets to transferring enterprise property and even embezzlement and bribery. Another method is the collusion between officials and business interests, where private agreements are made to avoid genuine auctions of state-owned enterprise equity. A third method involves allowing the former leaders of state-owned enterprises to purchase their own enterprises or control stakes in them. Since the managers of enterprises are better informed about the actual situation of their companies, they can exploit their informational advantage to manipulate others, forcing them, including the original administrative departments of state-owned enterprises, to lower their asking and bidding prices. In the end, they acquire the enterprise's equity at excessively low prices, sometimes even for free. In addition to the aforementioned practices, certain regulations issued by relevant authorities in recent years regarding the reform of state-owned enterprise equity have greatly facilitated the plundering of the masses' property by a few. And here, it is first necessary to discuss another level of the issue. As mentioned earlier, the book value of a company's assets