In 2007, the pace of such reforms accelerated amid the country's efforts to further promote the leading role of these large enterprises, the "backbone" of the national economy, said Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan.

As an important part of shareholder reform, another nine central SOEs offered initial public offerings this year, adding to the 33 SOEs listed domestically and abroad since the listing scheme launched in 2003.

Li Rongrong, head of the SASAC, was supportive of the overseas listings of Chinese enterprises, saying overseas markets had more sophisticated approaches that could help improve management of Chinese SOEs.

In a pilot move, the SOEs began to have outside directors. This was meant to make decision makers more detached from executive staff to better protect the interests of the company and common shareholders.

Currently, 19 such SOEs, including China Baosteel Group and China Shenhua Group, have picked up 66 outsider directors. The outside directors at 17 companies consisted of half or more of their board of directors members.

Since 2003, the SOEs started to recruit senior managerial staff in a more open way, whereas in the past these posts were not publicly available.

This year, 22 vacancies for high-level positions in central SOEs attracted 1,603 applicants. These included 25 foreigners and 10 from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.

Li Fangyong, deputy general manager of China Aviation Industry Corporation I (AVIC I), and Jiang Zhenxin, deputy general manager of China Netcom Group, were among those who finally beat their rival competitors. No foreigners have been recruited yet.

"Reforms have pushed central SOEs onto the front-line of the market to compete with other enterprises, including international companies. It is this kind of competition that has marked up the competitiveness of these SOEs," said SASAC analyst Peng Huagang.