http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/world/asia/china-soe-state-owned-enterprises.html 2016-10-13 13:16:27 Xi Jinping Reminds China’s State Companies of Who’s the Boss In an unusual meeting, the Chinese president said the Communist Party must take a greater role in the boardroom — despite earlier pledges toward reform. === BEIJING — A typical big company is chock-full of bosses, from the basement mail room all the way up to the executive suite. Even at the top, those in charge sometimes have to answer to big investors pushing for change. China But this week, China’s top leader made clear to the chiefs of the country’s biggest companies that there is only one boss who matters. In an unusual meeting that ended on Tuesday, President “Party leadership and building the role of the party are the root and soul for state-owned enterprises,” Mr. Xi’s comments, made at a national meeting to discuss the role of the party, indicate that he is unwilling to relinquish too much control over China’s state companies. Those state-owned companies — which dominate industries as disparate as banking, telecommunications and resources — Senior leaders, including Mr. Xi, have made similar remarks over the past year. But major party leaders and executives from big state-owned companies attended, and the event received considerable attention through the country’s propaganda channels. “There are no new policy ideas here, but the platform is significant,” said Wendy Leutert, a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University who studies Chinese state companies. The comments add to areas where the Communist Party has extended its dominance under Mr. Xi, including Historically, the overhaul of state-owned enterprises has proved to be politically unpopular because it meant laying off workers and reducing the rolls of those who received state benefits. Still, economists believe reforming big, wasteful state-owned enterprises A long-preferred method China has also begun to eliminate so-called Yet Mr. Xi’s remarks this week show that such change must not run counter to the ideological aims of the party. The attendance of Wang Qishan, Zhang Gaoli and Liu Yunshan — members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body — underscored the importance of Mr. Xi’s comments. Mr. Wang, the head of the party’s powerful discipline and inspection commission, has been instrumental in the far-reaching Mr. Xi hinted at indiscretions at state enterprises in his remarks, saying that supervision over officials in crucial positions needed to be intensified. State-owned enterprises have never been given a long leash by China’s ruling party. In 2009, at another meeting convened to discuss the party’s role in state-owned enterprises, Mr. Xi, then vice president,