(Yicai Global) March 22 -- During the Second State-Owned Enterprise Research Summit, officials from China’s state assets regulator delivered speeches about SOEs’ efforts to focus on the real economy and strategic emerging industries.

Chinese SOEs will focus on the real economy and further increase their efforts in developing key core technologies, Zhang Yuzhuo, director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said during the summit yesterday.

They should adhere to the country’s market-oriented, legal, and international reforms, enhance their core competitiveness, and become world-class businesses, Zhang added.

Weng Jeming, the SASAC’s deputy director, said that to better build a modern industrial system, the watchdog will promote the restructuring and integration of SEOs in a market-oriented manner, increase the layout of strategic emerging industries, such as new-generation information technology, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and basic industrial tools, and advance the digitalization, green transformation, and upgrading of traditional industries.

SOEs should focus on major national strategies, optimize their investment directions, and explore institutional mechanisms conducive to cutting-edge tech incubation, capital investment, and early market cultivation of innovative industries, such as brain-like intelligence, quantum information, gene technologies, future networks, deep-sea and airspace, hydrogen energy and energy storage, said Huang Qunhui, director of the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The average annual growth rate of investment at SOEs in strategic emerging industries topped 20 percent in the past five years. The SASAC said that the share of SOEs’ new investment in manufacturing would reach 13 percent this year, while that in strategic emerging industries will increase by more than 2 percentage points.

Editors: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione