China’s missing generation of businessmen
An aspect of Chinese business that is troubled, via the FT:
When the 62-year old president of Sinopec, China’s second largest oil company, stepped down last week, he was replaced by an executive nearly 20 years his junior – Wang Tianpu, aged 43….The succession regime at SOEs has long been dictated by seniority, which invariably has reflected age and length of service, automatically excluding executives like Mr Wang. But in recent months this rigid hierarchy has been upended, with about a dozen executives aged from their late thirties to their early fifties taking over the top positions of the largest state companies…..
By appointing younger executives, the government has leapfrogged the generation who became adults during the Cultural Revolution, the decade from 1966 when students were encouraged by Mao Zedong to make revolution at the expense of all else. Many schools or universities were closed during this period, or students simply did not attend, leaving men and women years later in their fifties still struggling to catch up on their education…..
But the recent wave of younger appointments does not mean that the government and the communist party are loosening their control over state enterprises. During the search for the new Sinopec chief, the party’s organisation, or personnel, department conducted interviews with potential candidates to update the fat dossiers it keeps on all rising stars, say executives familiar with the process. In accordance with the usual practice, Sasac would then use the dossiers to make a recommendation to senior leaders on who should be the new company president.