China's state-owned enterprises report total assets of 401tr yuan at end-2024

China's state-owned sector recorded total assets at the end of 2024, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday. According to a report on state-owned asset management, non financial state owned enterprises (SOEs) held total assets of 401.7 trillion yuan ($56.4 trillion), with state capital equity of 109.4 trillion yuan.

Combined liabilities reached 260.5 trillion yuan, yielding an average asset liability ratio of 64.8 percent. State-owned financial institutions, meanwhile, posted total assets of 487.9 trillion yuan and state financial capital equity of 33.9 trillion yuan.

The State Council, China's cabinet, submitted the report on state-owned asset management to the 18th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) on Sunday.

The report also detailed administrative and natural resource assets.

As of the end of 2024, China's state-owned land totaled about 524 million hectares (5.24 million square kilometers). Citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and China's position, the report said China's jurisdictional sea area is about 3 million square kilometers. Total water resources were listed at 31,123.0 hundred million cubic meters.

Proceeds from the national transfer of construction land use rights reached 4.1 trillion yuan in 2024, while revenue from mineral rights transfers totaled 138.39 billion yuan, according to a china.news.com report on Sunday.

The report said that local governments and departments have continued to strengthen state-asset management and vowed to "firmly manage and make good use of the people's shared wealth," according to Xinhua.

The report proposed next-step plans to deepen SOE reforms, enhance the governance of state financial capital, raise the management level of administrative and institutional state assets, and establish a sound framework for natural resource asset oversight. It also called for overall improvements in the quality and efficiency of state asset reporting.

On reform, the report called for optimizing the layout and structure of the state owned economy and fostering "new quality productive forces." It proposed mobilizing a new type of whole of nation system to advance scientific and technological innovation, strengthen joint research on key industrial technologies, reform talent assessment mechanisms, and foster new growth drivers, according to the china.news.com report.

China's centrally administered SOEs posted robust growth in both total assets and profits during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said during a September 17 press conference, according to Xinhua.

The centrally administered SOEs' total assets increased from less than 70 trillion yuan to more than 90 trillion yuan, while total profits increased from 1.9 trillion yuan to 2.6 trillion yuan -- average annual growth rates of 7.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively, Xinhua said.

The figures underscored the vast scale and pivotal role of state capital in China's economy, reflecting government goals of shoring up asset quality while pushing SOEs to drive innovation and industrial upgrading, said Li Jin, chief researcher at the China Enterprise Research Institute in Beijing.

The government's next steps — improving governance, strengthening talent and innovation systems, and refining natural resource accounting — signal a focus on both economic stability and structural transformation as China enters the final phase of its 14th Five-Year Plan, Li told the Global Times on Sunday.