High-Quality Development of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises: A Review from the Perspective of Social Value

Abstract

Against the backdrop of high-quality development becoming a central orientation of China’s economic governance, the development of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has attracted growing scholarly attention because these firms simultaneously embody market-oriented operational attributes and public missions. From a social value perspective, this study critically reviews the literature on the high-quality development of Chinese SOEs. The review shows that the existing literature has evolved along three major lines: mixed-ownership reform and governance optimization, digital transformation and organizational capability upgrading, and the extension of evaluation boundaries through ESG performance and social value creation. Overall, the research trajectory has shifted from traditional performance evaluation toward multidimensional assessments of development quality, and from analyses centered on institutional reform to an integrated institution-capability-outcome perspective. However, important limitations remain, including blurred conceptual boundaries, the lack of a unified measurement framework, and insufficient integration of explanatory mechanisms. In particular, social value still lacks stable and replicable operational indicators. Future research should therefore strengthen conceptual integration and indicator refinement, deepen mechanism identification and heterogeneity analysis across different SOE types, and broaden both methodological approaches and comparative perspectives. This review clarifies the intellectual trajectory of the literature on the high-quality development of Chinese SOEs and provides a basis for future theoretical development and empirical inquiry.