Stigmatizing of China's SOEs unwarranted

Editor's note: China's State-owned enterprises are independent market players that participate in market competitions based on market rules. However, some in the United States, due to their bias against non-Western players, always view China's SOEs as a "thorn in the flesh", and try to fabricate various crimes to stigmatize and demonize them. Zhong Sheng, a columnist for People's Daily, comments:

Since its entry into the World Trade Organization, China has been actively promoting reforms to ensure compliance and earnestly fulfilling the requirements of the WTO agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures. China has not only completely eliminated prohibitive subsidies, but also strictly complied with the WTO's transparency principle on subsidies. Such practices have been highly praised by the international community. Pascal Lamy, former director-general of the WTO, praised China for "meeting WTO commitments very well" and said the US' accusation against China is wrong.

The reason why some in the US have deliberately hyped up China's subsidies for SOEs is their sour grapes mentality. According to the latest Top 500 list released by Fortune magazine, China has more enterprises on the list than the US for the first time. Many of these companies are SOEs. Faced with the excellent performance of many Chinese SOEs in the global market, some in the US are aghast and so they try to make trouble for them.