Southern Weekend, a Chinese media headquartered in Guangzhou of Guang Dong Province, published an article on December 7, 2017 detailing how China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) carry out the (Communist) Party’s activities in their overseas operations. Below are excerpts from the article:

In order to reduce conflicts with local laws and policies, all Chinese enterprises have implemented corresponding measures to carry out Party development work.

CITIC Construction Co. Ltd. has established the working mechanism for overseas Party development of “internal persistence, not being open to the outside, differential treatment from the outside, and effective operations.” China Railway Group Co., Ltd. stipulates that the Party development work of internal staff can be centralized and should start after working hours and after the non-Chinese staff have left.

“Our overseas party building activities follow the principle of five non-disclosures,” said Cao Haixia, director of the party office of the PetroChina Great Wall Drilling Company. The five non-disclosures are, “Do not disclose anything about the Party’s organization, do not disclose the identity of the Party members, do not disclose the Party’s title, do not disclose the Party’s activities, and do not disclose the party’s documents.”

Southern Weekend found that many state-owned enterprises have clearly stipulated in their regulations on the work of Party development that the overseas Party development work generally upholds this “five non-disclosure” principle.

The Southern Weekend reporter learned that, with the deepening of the internationalization of state-owned enterprises, how to design the system for the overseas party-development of state-owned enterprises has become an important issue for the organizational departments and state-owned assets management departments at all levels.

At the end of 2016, the Central Government General Office transmitted the document “The Guiding Opinions of the Central Organization Department, the Party Committee of the SASAC of the State Council, the Party Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Party Group of the Ministry of Commerce on Strengthening the Party’s Development in State Enterprises’ Overseas Operations. In April and May 2017, Beijing SASAC twice carried out overseas investigations of grass-roots Party development in overseas projects under municipal SOEs. They believe that upholding the Party’s leadership over overseas enterprises is a principle issue of fundamental and directional significance.