Plan looks too broad to brush out problems

Beijing recently released joint guidelines on the next round of reforms for State-owned enterprises.

SOE reform has been one of the central tasks of the economic reform, but for more than a decade, since former premier Zhu Rongji was appointed economic czar and oversaw massive restructuring of the SOE system from the planned economy era, there hasn't been a central program charting the reform's progress.

Not having a central program for an important part of the reform was disappointing. Vested interests inevitably grew in the vacuum of overarching principles.